^ 


BR  121  ,F74  1922a 

Fosdick,  Harry  Emerson,  187 

-1969. 
Christianity  and  progress 


Christianity  and  Progress 


7HE  COLE  LECTURES 

1923 

Christianity  and  Progress 

By  Harry  Emerson  Fosdick. 

The    Foundations    of    Faith       .... 

1921 

By  John  Kelman,  D.J). 

A  New  Mind  for  the  New  Age     .... 

1920 

By  Henry  Churchill  King,  DD.,  LL.D. 

The    Prodnctive    Beliefs 

1919 

By   Lynn   H.   Hough,  D.O. 

Old  Trutlis  and  Neio  Facts       .... 

1918 

By  Charles  E.  Jefferson,  D.D. 

The    North   American    Idea      .... 

1917 

By  James  A.  Macdonald,  TJ/.D. 

The  Foundation  of  Modern  Eeligion 

1916 

By  Herbert  B.  Workman,  D.D. 

Winning   the   World  for   Christ 

1915 

By  Bishop  Walter  K.  Lambuth. 

Personal   Christianity 

1914 

By  Bishop  Francis  J.  i^IcConnell. 

The   God   We   Trust 

1913 

By  G.  A,  Johnston  Ross. 

What  Does   Christianity  Mean? 

1912 

By  W.  H.  P.  Faunce. 

Some  Great  Leaders  in  the  World  Movement 

1911 

By  Robert  E.  Speer. 

In  the  School  of  Christ 

1910 

By  Bishop  William  Fraser  McDowell. 

Jesus  the  Worker 

1909 

By  Charles  McTyeire  Bishop,  D.D. 

The  Fact  of  Conversion 

1908 

By  George  Jackson,  B.A. 

God's  Message  to  the  Human  Soul 

1907 

By  John  Watson  (Ian  Maclaren). 

Christ  and  Science 

1906 

By  Francis  Henry  Smith. 

The   Universal   Elements    of   the   Christian 

Beligion 

1905 

By  Charles  Cuthbert  HaU. 

The  Eeligion  of  the  Incarnation 

1903 

By  Bishop  Eugene  RusseU  Hendrix. 

The  Cole  Lectures  for 

delivered  before  Vanderhilt  University 


::i^-mrA.  ^^ 


Christianity  and 
Progress 


By        y 
HARRY  EMERSON  FOSDICK 

Professor  of  Practical  Theology  in  the 

Union  Theological  Seminary; 

Preacher  at  the  First  Presbyterian  Church 

New  York 


ASSOCIATION    PRESS 

New  York:  347  Madison  Avenue 
1922 


Copyright,  1922,  by 
FLEMING  H,  REVELL  COMPANY 


THE  COLE  LECTURES 

THE   late   Colonel   E.   W.    Cole   of    Nashville, 
Tennessee,  donated  to  Vanderbilt  University 
the  sum  of  five  thousand  dollars,  afterwards 
increased  by  Mrs.  E.  W.  Cole  to  ten  thousand, 
the  design  and  conditions  of  v^rhich  gift  are  stated 
as  follows: 

"The  object  of  this  fund  is  to  establish  a 
foundation  for  a  perpetual  Lectureship  in  connec- 
tion with  the  School  of  Religion  of  the  University, 
to  be  restricted  in  its  scope  to  a  defense  and 
advocacy  of  the  Christian  religion.  The  lectures 
shall  be  delivered  at  such  intervals,  from  time  to 
time,  as  shall  be  deemed  best  by  the  Board  of 
Trust;  and  the  particular  theme  and  lecturer  will 
be  determined  by  the  Theological  Faculty.  Said 
lecture  shall  always  be  reduced  to  writing  in  full, 
and  the  manuscript  of  the  same  shall  be  the  prop- 
erty of  the  University,  to  be  published  or  dis- 
posed of  by  the  Board  of  Trust  at  its  discretion, 
the  net  proceeds  arising  therefrom  to  be  added  to 
the  foundation  funji,  or  otherwise  used  for  the 
benefit  of  the  School  of  Religion." 


Preface 

N"0  one  who  ever  has  delivered  the  Cole 
Lectures  will  fail  to  associate  them,  in 
his  grateful  memory,  with  the  hospi- 
table fellowship  of  the  elect  at  Vanderbilt  Uni- 
versity. My  first  expression  of  thanks  is  due  to 
the  many  professors  and  students  there,  lately 
strangers  and  now  friends,  who,  after  the 
burdensome  preparation  of  these  lectures,  made 
their  delivery  a  happy  and  rewarding  experi- 
ence for  the  lecturer.  I  am  hoping  now  that 
even  though  prepared  for  spoken  address  the 
lectures  may  be  serviceable  to  others  who  will 
read  instead  of  hear  them.  At  any  rate,  it 
seemed  best  to  publish  them  without  change  in 
form — addresses  intended  for  public  delivery 
and  bearing,  I  doubt  not,  many  marks  of  the 
spoken  style 

I  have  tried  to  make  a  sally  into  a  field  of 
inquiry  where,  within  the  next  few  years,  an 
increasing  company  of  investigators  is  sure  to 
go.  The  idea  of  progress  was  abroad  in  the 
world  long  before  men  became  conscious  of  it ; 
and  men  became  conscious  of  it  in  its  practical 
effects  long  before  they  stopped  to  study  its 

7 


8  PREFACE 

transforming  consequences  in  their  philosophy 
and  their  religion.  No  longer,  however,  can  we 
avoid  the  intellectual  issue  which  is  involved  in 
our  new  outlook  upon  a  dynamic,  mobile,  pro- 
gressive world.  Hardly  a  better  description 
could  be  given  of  the  intellectual  advance  which 
has  marked  the  last  century  than  that  which 
Renan  wrote  years  ago :  "  the  substitution  of 
the  category  of  becoming  for  being,  of  the  con- 
ception of  relativity  for  that  of  the  absolute,  of 
movement  for  immobility."  "*"  Underneath  all 
other  problems  which  the  Christian  Gospel 
faces  is  the  task  of  choosing  what  her  attitude 
shall  be  toward  this  new  and  powerful  force, 
the  idea  of  progress,  which  in  every  realm  is 
remaking  man's  thinking. 

I  have  endeavoured  in  detail  to  indicate  my 
indebtedness  to  the  many  books  by  whose  light 
I  have  been  helped  to  see  my  way.  In  addition 
I  wish  to  express  especial  thanks  to  my  friend 
and  colleague,  Professor  Eugene  W.  Lyman, 
who  read  the  entire  manuscript  to  my  great 
profit ;  and,  as  well,  to  my  secretary,  Miss  Mar- 
garet Renton,  whose  efficient  service  has  been 
an  invaluable  help. 

H.  E.  F. 
New  York 


iRenan :    Averroes  et  L'Averroisme,  p.  vii. 


Contents 


PAGE 


LECTURE  I 
The  Idea  01^  Progress    .        .        .        .11 

LECTURE  II 
The  Need  eor  Rei^igion        .        .        .49 

LECTURE  III 
The  GospeIv  and  Sociai.  Progress  .         .   ■  87 

LECTURE  IV 
Progressive  Christianity     .         .         .  127 

LECTURE  V 
The  Perils  oe  Progress        .        .        .  167 

LECTURE  VI 
Progress  and  God 207 


LECTURE  I 

THE  IDEA  OF  PROGRESS 
I 

THE  supposition  that  fish  do  not  recog- 
nize the  existence  of  water  nor  birds 
the  existence  of  air  often  has  been 
used  to  ilkistrate  the  insensitive  unaware- 
ness  of  which  we  all  are  capable  in  the  pres- 
ence of  some  encompassing  medium  of  our 
lives.  The  illustration  aptly  fits  the  minds 
of  multitudes  in  this  generation,  who  live, 
as  we  all  do,  in  the  atmosphere  of  pro- 
gressive hopes  and  yet  are  not  intelligently 
aware  of  it  nor  conscious  of  its  newness,  its 
strangeness  and  its  penetrating  influence. 
We  read  as  a  matter  of  course  such  charac- 
teristic lines  as  these  from  Tennyson: 

"  Yet  I  doubt  not  thro'  the  ages  one  increas- 
ing purpose  runs, 
And  the  thoughts  of  men  are  widen'd  with 
the  process  of  the  suns." 

Such  lines,  however,  are  not  to  be  taken  as 

a  matter  of  course;  until  comparatively  re- 

11 


12       CHRISTIANITY  AND  PROGRESS 

cent  generations  such  an  idea  as  that  never 
had  dawned  on  anybody's  mind,  and  the 
story  of  the  achievement  of  that  progressive 
interpretation  of  history  is  one  of  the  most 
fascinating  narratives  in  the  long  record  of 
man's  mental  Odyssey.  In  particular,  the 
Christian  who  desires  to  understand  the  in- 
fluences, both  intellectual  and  practical, 
which  are  playing  with  transforming  power 
upon  Christianity  today,  upon  its  doctrines, 
its  purposes,  its  institutions,  and  its  social 
applications,  must  first  of  all  understand 
the  idea  of  progress.  For  like  a  changed 
climate,  which  in  time  alters  the  fauna  and 
flora  of  a  continent  beyond  the  power  of 
human  conservatism  to  resist,  this  progres- 
sive conception  of  life  is  affecting  every 
thought  and  purpose  of  man,  and  no  at- 
tempted segregation  of  religion  from  its  in- 
fluence is  likely  to  succeed. 

The  significance  of  this  judgment  be- 
comes the  more  clear  when  we  note  the 
fact  that  the  idea  of  progress  in  our  modern 
sense  is  not  to  be  found  before  the  sixteenth 
century.  Men  before  that  time  had  lived 
without  progressive  hopes  just  as  before 
Copernicus  they  had  lived  upon  a  stationary 
earth.  Man's  life  was  not  thought  of  as  a 
growth;  gradual  change  for  the  better  was 


THE  IDEA  OF  PROGRESS  13 

not  supposed  to  be  God's  method  with  man- 
kind; the  future  was  not  conceived  in  terms 
of  possible  progress;  and  man's  estate  on 
earth  was  not  looked  upon  as  capable  of  in- 
definite perfectibility.  All  these  ideas,  so 
familiar  to  us,  were  undreamed  of  in  the 
ancient  and  medieval  world.  The  new  as- 
tronomy is  not  a  more  complete  break  from 
the  old  geocentric  system  with  its  stationary 
earth  than  is  our  modern  progressive  way  of 
thinking  from  our  fathers'  static  conception 
of  human  life  and  history. 

II 

It  will  be  worth  our  while  at  the  begin- 
ning of  our  study  to  review  in  outline  this 
development  of  the  idea  of  progress,  that 
we  may  better  understand  the  reasons  for 
its  emergence  and  may  more  truly  estimate 
its  revolutionary  effects.  In  the  ancient 
world  the  Greeks,  with  all  their  far-flung 
speculations,  never  hit  upon  the  idea  of 
progress.  To  be  sure,  clear  intimations, 
scattered  here  and  there  in  Greek  literature, 
indicate  faith  that  man  in  the  past  had  im- 
proved his  lot.  Aeschylus  saw  men  lifted 
from  their  hazardous  lives  in  sunless  caves 
by  the  intervention  of  Prometheus  and  his 
sacrificial   teaching   of   the   arts   of   peace; 


14       CHRISTIANITY  AND  PROGRESS 

Euripides  contrasted  the  primitive  barba- 
rism in  which  man  began  with  the  civilized 
estate  which  in  Greece  he  had  achieved — 
but  this  perceived  advance  never  was 
erected  into  a  progressive  idea  of  human 
life  as  a  whole.  Rather,  the  original  barba- 
rism, from  which  the  arts  of  civilization  had 
for  a  little  lifted  men,  was  itself  a  degener- 
ation from  a  previous  ideal  estate,  and 
human  history  as  a  whole  was  a  cyclic  and 
repetitious  story  of  never-ending  rise  and 
fall.  Plato's  philosophy  of  history  was 
typical:  the  course  of  cosmic  life  is  divided 
into  cycles,  each  seventy-two  thousand  solar 
years  in  length ;  during  the  first  half  of  each 
cycle,  when  creation  newly  comes  from  the 
hands  of  Deity,  mankind's  estate  is  happily 
ideal,  but  then  decay  begins  and  each  cycle's 
latter  half  sinks  from  bad  to  worse  until 
Deity  once  more  must  take  a  hand  and 
make  all  things  new  again.  Indeed,  so  far 
from  reaching  the  idea  of  progress,  the  an- 
cient Greeks  at  the  very  center  of  their 
thinking  were  incapacitated  for  such  an 
achievement  by  their  suspiciousness  of 
change.  They  were  artists  and  to  them  the 
perfect  was  finished,  like  the  Parthenon, 
and  therefore  was  incapable  of  being  im- 
proved  by   change.     Change,   so   far  from 


THE  IDEA  OF  PROGRESS  15 

meaning,  as  it  does  with  us,  the  possibihty 
of  betterment,  meant  with  them  the  cer- 
tainty of  decay;  no  changes  upon  earth  in 
the  long  run  were  good;  all  change  was  the 
sure  sign  that  the  period  of  degeneration 
had  set  in  from  which  only  divine  interven- 
tion could  redeem  mankind.  Paul  on  Mars 
Hill  quoted  the  Greek  poet  Aratus  concern- 
ing the  sonship  of  all  mankind  to  God,  but 
Aratus's  philosophy  of  history  is  not  so 
pleasantly  quotable : 

"  How  base  a  progeny  sprang  from  golden  sires ! 
And  viler  shall  they  be  whom  ye  beget."^ 

Such,  in  general,  was  the  non-progressive 
outlook  of  the  ancient  Greeks. 

Nor  did  the  Romans  hit  upon  the  idea  of 
progress  in  any  form  remotely  approaching 
our  modern  meaning.  The  casual  reader,  to 
be  sure,  will  find  occasional  flares  of  ex- 
pectancy about  the  future  or  of  pride  in  the 
advance  of  the  past  which  at  first  suggest 
progressive  interpretations  of  history.  So 
Seneca,  rejoicing  because  he  thought  he 
knew  the  explanation  of  the  moon's  eclipses, 
wrote:  "The  days  will  come  when  those 
things  which  now  lie  hidden  time  and 
human   diligence   will   bring   to   light.  .  .  . 


lAratus  of  Soli :     Phaenomcna,  lines  122-3. 


16       CHRISTIANITY  AND  PROGRESS 

The  days  will  come  when  our  posterity  will 
marvel  that  we  were  ignorant  of  truths  so 
obvious."  ^  So,  too,  the  Epicureans,  like  the 
Greek  tragedians  before  them,  believed  that 
human  knowledge  and  effort  had  lifted 
mankind  out  of  primitive  barbarism  and 
Lucretius  described  how  man  by  the  devel- 
opment of  agriculture  and  navigation,  the 
building  of  cities  and  the  establishment  of 
laws,  the  manufacture  of  physical  conve- 
niences and  the  creation  of  artistic  beauty, 
had  risen,  "  gradually  progressing,"  to  his 
present  height.^  Such  hopeful  changes  in 
the  past,  however,  were  not  the  prophecies 
of  continuous  advance;  they  were  but  inci- 
dental fluctuations  in  a  historic  process 
which  knew  no  progress  as  a  whole.  Even 
the  Stoics  saw  in  history  only  a  recurrent 
rise  and  fall  in  endless  repetition  so  that  all 
apparent  change  for  good  or  evil  was  but 
the  influx  or  the  ebbing  of  the  tide  in  an 
essentially  unchanging  sea.  The  words  of 
Marcus  Aurelius  are  typical:  "  The  periodic 
movements  of  the  universe  are  the  same,  up 
and  down  from  age  to  age  " ;  ''  He  who  has 
seen  present  things  has  seen  all,  both  every- 

^Lucius  Annaeus  Seneca:  Naturalium  Quaestionum, 
Liber  VII,  25. 

-T.  Lucretius  Carus :  De  Rerum  Natura,  Lib.  V,  1455 
— '*  Paullatim  docuit  pedetentim  progredienteis." 


THE  IDEA  OF  PROGRESS  17 

thing  which  has  taken  place  from  all  eter- 
nity and  everything  which  will  be  for  time 
without  end;  for  all  are  of  one  kin  and  of 
one  form  " ;  "  He  who  is  forty  years  old,  if 
he  has  any  understanding  at  all,  has,  by 
virtue  of  the  uniformity  that  prevails,  seen 
all  things  which  have  been  and  all  that 
will  be."  ^ 

When  with  these  Greek  and  Roman  ideas 
the  Hebrew-Christian  influences  blended, 
no  conception  of  progress  in  the  modern 
sense  was  added  by  the  Church's  contribu- 
tion. To  be  sure,  the  Christians'  uncom- 
promising faith  in  personality  as  the  object 
of  divine  redemption  and  their  vigorous 
hope  about  the  future  of  God's  people  in  the 
next  world,  if  not  in  this,  calcined  some 
elements  in  the  classical  tradition.  Belief 
in  cycles,  endlessly  repeating  themselves 
through  cosmic  ages,  went  by  the  board. 
This  earth  became  the  theatre  of  a  unique 
experiment  made  once  for  all;  in  place  of 
the  ebb  and  flow  of  tides  in  a  changeless  sea, 
mankind's  story  became  a  drama  moving 
toward  a  climactic  denotiement  that  would 
shake  heaven  and  earth  together  in  a  divine 
cataclysm.     But   this  consummation  of  all 


^Marcus  Aurelius  Antoninus:     Meditations,  IX,  28; 
VI,  37;  XI,  1. 


18       CHRISTIANITY  AND  PROGRESS 

history  was  not  a  goal  progressively  to  be 
achieved;  it  was  a  divine  invasion  of  the 
world  expectantly  to  be  awaited,  when  the 
victorious  Christ  would  return  and  the  Day 
of  Judgment  dawn. 

The  development  of  this  apocalyptic 
phrasing  of  hope  has  been  traced  too  often 
to  require  long  rehearsal  here.  If  the 
Greeks  were  essentially  philosophers  and 
welcomed  congenially  ideas  like  endless  cos- 
mic cycles,  the  Hebrews  were  essentially 
practical  and  dramatic  in  their  thinking  and 
they  welcomed  a  picture  of  God's  victory 
capable  of  being  visualized  by  the  imagina- 
tion. At  first  their  national  hopes  had  been 
set  on  the  restoration  of  the  Davidic  king- 
dom ;  then  the  Davidic  king  himself  had 
grow^n  in  their  imagination  until,  as  Mes- 
siah in  a  proper  sense,  he  gathered  to  him- 
self supernal  attributes;  then,  as  a  child  of 
their  desperate  national  circumstances,  the 
hope  was  born  of  their  Messiah's  sudden 
coming  on  the  clouds  of  heaven  for  their 
help.  Between  the  Testaments  this  expec- 
tation expanded  and  robed  itself  with  pomp 
and  glory,  so  that  when  the  Christians  came 
they  found  awaiting  them  a  phrasing  of 
hope  which  they  accepted  to  body  forth 
their  certainty  of  God's  coming  sovereignty 


THE  IDEA  OF  PROGRESS  19 

over  all  the  earth.  This  expectation  of  com- 
ing triumph  was  not  progressive;  it  was 
cataclysmic.  It  did  not  offer  the  prospect 
of  great  gains  to  be  worked  for  over  long 
periods  of  time;  it  offered  a  divine  invasion 
of  history  immediately  at  hand.  It  was 
pictured,  not  in  terms  of  human  betterment 
to  be  achieved,  but  of  divine  action  to  be 
awaited.  The  victory  would  suddenly  come 
like  the  flood  in  Noah's  day,  like  the  light- 
ning flashing  from  one  end  of  the  heaven  to 
the  other,  like  a  thief  in  the  night. 

To  be  sure,  this  eager  expectation  of  a 
heavenly  kingdom  immediately  to  arrive  on 
earth  soon  grew  dim  among  the  Christians, 
and  the  reasons  are  obvious.  For  one  thing, 
the  Church  herself,  moving  out  from  days 
of  hardship  to  days  of  preferment  and  pros- 
perity, began  to  allure  with  her  inviting 
prospects  of  growing  power  the  enthusi- 
asms and  hopes  of  the  people,  until  not 
the  suddenly  appearing  kingdom  from  the 
heavens,  but  the  expanding  Church  on  earth 
became  the  center  of  Christian  interest. 
For  another  thing,  Christ  meant  more  to 
Christians  than  the  inaugurator  of  a  post- 
poned kingdom  which,  long  awaited  with 
ardent  expectation,  still  did  not  arrive; 
Christ  was   the   giver  of  eternal  life  now. 


20       CHRISTIANITY  AND  PROGRESS 

More  and  more  the  emphasis  shifted  from 
what  Christ  would  do  for  his  people  when 
he  came  upon  the  clouds  of  heaven  to  what 
he  was  doing  for  them  through  his  spiritual 
presence  with  them.  Even  in  the  Fourth 
Gospel  one  finds  this  good  news  that  Christ 
had  already  come  again  in  the  hearts  of  his 
people  insisted  on  in  evident  contrast  with 
the  apocalyptic  hope  literally  conceived. 
For  another  thing,  dramatic  hopes  of  a  sud- 
den invasion  of  the  world  are  always  the 
offspring  of  desperate  conditions.  Only 
when  people  are  hard  put  to  it  do  they  want 
history  catastrophically  stopped  in  the  midst 
of  its  course.  The  Book  of  Daniel  must  be 
explained  by  the  tyrannies  of  Antiochus 
Epiphanes,  the  Book  of  Revelation  by  the 
persecutions  of  Domitian,  the  present  re- 
crudescence of  pre-millennialism  by  the 
tragedy  of  the  Great  War.  But  when  the 
persecution  of  the  Church  by  the  State  gave 
way  to  the  running  of  the  State  by  the 
Church ;  when  to  be  a  Christian  was  no 
longer  a  road  to  the  lions  but  the  sine  qua 
non  of  preferment  and  power;  when  the 
souls  under  the  altar  ceased  crying,  ''  How 
long,  O  Master,  the  holy  and  true,  dost  thou 
not  judge  and  avenge  our  blood  on  them 
that  dwell  on  the  earth?"  then  the  apoca- 


THE  IDEA  OF  PROGRESS  21 

lyptic  hopes  grew  dim  and  the  old  desire 
for  a  kingdom  immediately  to  come  was 
subdued  to  an  expectation,  no  longer  im- 
perative and  urgent,  that  sometime  the 
course  of  history  would  stop  on  Judgment 
Day. 

In  all  these  Greek  and  Roman,  Hebrew 
and  Christian  contributions,  which  flowed 
together  and  then  fiow^ed  out  into  the  medi- 
eval age,  there  was  no  suggestion  of  a  mod- 
ern idea  of  progress,  and  in  the  medieval 
age  itself  there  was  nothing  to  create  a 
fresh  phrasing  of  expectancy.  Men  were 
aware  of  the  darkness  of  the  days  that  had 
fallen  on  the  earth;  even  when  they  began 
to  rouse  themselves  from  their  lethargy, 
their  thoughts  of  greatness  did  not  reach 
forward  toward  a  golden  age  ahead  but 
harked  back 

"  To  the  glory  that  was  Greece 
And  the  grandeur  that  was  Rome," 

and  their  intellectual  life,  instead  of  being 
an  adventurous  search  for  new  truth,  was  a 
laborious  endeavour  to  stabilize  the  truth 
already  formulated  in  the  great  days  of  the 
early  Church.  Indeed,  the  Church's  specific 
contribution  of  a  vividly  imagined  faith  in  a 
future  world,  as  the  goal  of  the  most  absorb- 


22       CHRISTIANITY  AND  PROGRESS 

ing  hopes  and  fears  of  men,  tended  rather 
to  confirm  than  to  dissipate  the  static  con- 
ception of  earthly  life  and  history.  With  an 
urgency  that  the  ancient  world  had  never 
known  the  Christian  world  believed  in  im- 
mortality and  visualized  the  circumstances 
of  the  life  to  come  so  concretely  that  in  a 
medieval  catechism  the  lurid  colour  of  the 
setting  sun  was  ascribed  to  the  supposi- 
tion that  "  he  looketh  down  upon  hell."  ^ 
Nothing  in  this  life  had  any  importance  save 
as  it  prepared  the  souls  of  men  for  life  to 
come.  Even  Roger  Bacon,  his  mind  flash- 
ing like  a  beacon  from  below  the  sky-line  of 
the  modern  world,  was  sure  that  all  man's 
knowledge  of  nature  was  useful  only  in  pre- 
paring his  soul  to  await  the  coming  of  Anti- 
christ and  the  Day  of  Judgment.  There  was 
no  idea  of  progress,  then,  in  the  medieval 
age.  Human  life  and  history  were  static 
and  the  only  change  to  be  anticipated  was 
the  climactic  event 

"  When  earth  breaks  up  and  heaven  expands." 

Ill 

The    emergence    of   modern    progressive 


^Andrew   D.   White:   A   History  of   the  Warfare  of 
Science  with  Theology  in  Christendom,  Vol.  I,  p.  97. 


THE  IDEA  OF  PROGRESS  23 

hopes  out  of  this  static  medievalism  is  one 
of  the  epic  occurrences  of  history.  The 
causes  which  furthered  the  movement  seem 
now  in  retrospect  to  be  woven  into  a  fabric 
so  tightly  meshed  as  to  resist  unraveling. 
Nevertheless,  it  is  not  difficult  to  see  at 
least  some  of  the  major  factors  which 
furthered  this  revolutionary  change  from  a 
static  to  a  progressive  world. 

Among  the  first,  scientific  invention  is 
surely  to  be  noted.  Even  Roger  Bacon, 
prophecying  with  clairvoyant  insight  far  in 
advance  of  the  event,  foresaw  one  of  the 
determining  factors  of  the  modern  age: 
"  Machines  for  navigating  can  be  made  so 
that  without  rowers  great  ships  can  be 
guided  by  one  pilot  on  river  or  sea  more 
swiftly  than  if  they  were  full  of  oarsmen. 
Likewise  vehicles  are  possible  which  with- 
out draught-animals  can  be  propelled  with 
incredible  speed,  like  the  scythed  chariots, 
as  we  picture  them,  in  which  antiquity 
fought.  Likewise  a  flying  machine  is  pos- 
sible in  the  middle  of  which  a  man  may  sit, 
using  some  ingenious  device  by  which  arti- 
ficial wrings  will  beat  the  air  like  those  of  a 
flying  bird.  Also  machines,  small  in  size, 
can  be  constructed  to  lift  and  move  unlim- 
ited weights,  than  which  in  an  emergency 


24       CHRISTIANITY  AND  PROGRESS 

nothing  is  more  useful."  ^  So  dreamed  the 
great  friar  in  the  thirteenth  century.  When, 
then,  we  find  the  minds  of  men  first  throw- 
ing off  their  intellectual  vassalage  to  an- 
tiquity and  beginning  to  believe  in  them- 
selves, their  present  powers  and  their 
future  prospects,  it  is  this  new-found  mas- 
tery over  nature's  latent  resources  which  is 
the  spring  and  fountain  of  their  confidence. 
Cardan,  in  the  sixteenth  century,  marveling 
at  the  then  modern  inventions  of  the  com- 
pass, the  printing  press,  and  gunpowder, 
cried,  "  All  antiquity  has  nothing  compa- 
rable to  these  three  things."  ^  Every  year 
from  that  day  to  this  has  deepened  the  im- 
pression made  upon  the  minds  of  men  by 
the  marvelous  prospect  of  harnessing  the 
resources  of  the  universe.  The  last  one 
hundred  and  twenty-five  years  have  seen 
the  invention  of  the  locomotive,  the  steam- 
ship, the  telegraph,  the  sewing  machine,  the 
camera,  the  telephone,  the  gasoline  engine, 
wireless  telegraphy  and  telephony,  and  the 
many  other  applications  of  electricity.  As 
one  by  one  new  areas  of  power  have  thus 


iRoger  Bacon :  Epistola  de  Secretis  Operlbus  Artis 
et  Naturae,  et  de  NuUitate  Magiae,  Caput  IV,  in  Opera 
Quaedam  Hactenus  Inedita,  edited  by  J.  S.  Brewer,  p. 
533. 

-Jerome  Cardan:  De  Subtilitate,  Liber  Decimussepti- 
mus :  De  artibus,  artificiosisque  rebus. 


THE  IDEA  OF  PROGRESS  25 

come  under  the  control  of  man,  with  every 
conquest  suggesting  many  more  not  yet 
achieved  but  brought  within  range  of  possi- 
bihty,  old  theories  of  cosmic  degeneration 
and  circular  futility  have  gone  to  pieces,  the 
glamour  of  antiquity  has  lost  its  allurement, 
the  great  days  of  humanity  upon  the  earth 
have  been  projected  into  the  future,  and  the 
gradual  achievement  of  human  progress  has 
become  the  hope  of  man. 

Another  element  in  the  emergence  of  the 
modern  progressive  outlook  upon  life  is  im- 
mediately consequent  upon  the  first:  world- 
wide discovery,  exploration  and  intercom- 
munication. Great  as  the  practical  results 
have  been  which  trace  their  source  to  the 
adventurers  who,  from  Columbus ,  down, 
pioneered  unknown  seas  to  unknown  lands, 
the  psychological  effects  have  been  greater 
still.  Who  could  longer  live  cooped  up  in  a 
static  w^orld,  when  the  old  barriers  were  so 
being  overpassed  and  new  continents  were 
inviting  adventure,  settlement,  and  social 
experiment  hitherto  untried?  The  theolog- 
ical progressiveness  of  the  Pilgrim  Fathers, 
starting  out  from  Leyden  for  a  new  world, 
was  not  primarily  a  matter  of  speculation;  it 
was  even  more  a  matter  of  an  adventurous 
spirit,  which,  once  admitted  into  life,  could 


26       CHRISTIANITY  AND  PROGRESS 

not  be  kept  out  of  religious  thought  as  well. 
In  Edward  Winslow's  account  of  Pastor 
Robinson's  last  sermon  before  the  little 
company  of  pioneers  left  Leyden,  we  read 
that  Robinson  "  took  occasion  also  miser- 
ably to  bewaile  the  state  and  condition  of 
the  Reformed  Churches,  who  were  come  to 
a  period  in  Religion,  and  would  goe  no 
further  than  the  instruments  of  their  Refor- 
mation: As  for  example,  the  Lutherans  they 
could  not  be  drawne  to  goe  beyond  what 
Luther  saw,  for  whatever  part  of  God's  will 
he  had  further  imparted  and  revealed  to 
Calvin,  they  will  die  rather  than  embrace  it. 
And  so  also,  saith  he,  you  see  the  Cahnnists, 
they  stick  where  he  left  them:  a  misery 
much  to  bee  lamented;  For  though  they 
were  precious  shining  lights  in  their  times, 
yet  God  hath  not  revealed  his  whole  will  to 
them :  And  were  they  now  living,  saith  hee, 
they  would  bee  as  ready  and  willing  to  em- 
brace further  light,  as  that  they  had  re- 
ceived." ^  Static  methods  of  thinking  are 
here  evidently  going  to  pieces  before  the 
impact  of  a  distinctly  unstatic  world.  They 
were  looking  for  "  more  truth  and  light  yet 
to  breake   forth   out  of   his  holy   Word  "  ^ 


^Edward  Winslow:     Hypocrisie  Unmasked,  p.  97. 
2Ibid. 


THE  IDEA  OF  PROGRESS  27 

because  they  lived  in  a  time  when  new 
things  had  been  happening  at  an  exhilarat- 
ing rate  and  when  pioneering  adventure  and 
general  travel  in  a  world  of  open  avenues 
were  already  beginning  to  have  that  liberat- 
ing effect  which  has  increased  with  every 
passing  century. 

Closely  allied  with  the  two  elements  al- 
ready noted  is  a  third:  the  increase  of 
knowledge,  which,  as  in  the  case  of  astron- 
omy, threw  discredit  upon  the  superior 
claims  of  antiquity  and  made  modern  men 
seem  v/iser  than  their  sires.  For  ages  the 
conviction  had  held  the  ground  that  the 
ancients  were  the  wisest  men  who  ever 
lived  and  that  we,  their  children,  were  but 
infants  in  comparison.  When,  therefore, 
the  Copernican  astronomy  proved  true, 
when  the  first  terrific  shock  of  it  had  passed 
through  resultant  anger  into  wonder  and 
from  wonder  into  stupefied  acceptance,  and 
from  that  at  last  into  amazed  exultation  at 
the  vast,  new  universe  unveiled,  the  credit 
of  antiquity  received  a  stunning  blow.  So 
far  was  Aristotle  from  being  "  the  master  of 
those  who  know "  whom  the  medievalists 
had  revered,  that  he  had  not  even  known 
the  shape  and  motion  of  the  earth  or  its  re- 
lation with  the  sun.     For  the  first  time  in 


28       CHRISTIANITY  AND  PROGRESS 

history  the  idea  emerged  that  humanity 
accumulates  knowledge,  that  the  ancients 
were  the  infants,  that  the  moderns  represent 
the  age  and  wisdom  of  the  race.  Consider 
the  significance  of  those  words  of  Pascal  in 
the  seventeenth  century:  "  Those  whom  we 
call  ancient  were  really  new  in  all  things, 
and  properly  constituted  the  infancy  of 
mankind ;  and  as  we  have  joined  to  their 
knowledge  the  experience  of  the  centuries 
which  have  followed  them,  it  is  in  ourselves 
that  we  should  find  this  antiquity  that  we 
revere  in  others."  ^  For  the  first  time  in 
history  men  turned  their  faces,  in  their 
search  for  knowledge,  not  backward  but  for- 
ward, and  began  to  experience  that  attitude 
which  with  us  is  habitual — standing  on  tip- 
toe in  eager  expectancy,  sure  that  to- 
morrow some  new  and  unheard  of  truth' 
will  be  revealed. 

New  inventions,  new  discoveries,  new 
knowledge — even  before  the  eighteenth 
century  all  these  factors  were  under  way. 
Then  a  new  factor  entered  Avhich  has  played 
a  powerful  part  in  substituting  a  progres- 
sive for  a  static  world:  new  social  hopes. 


iBlaise  Pascal:  Opuscules,  Preface  to  the  Treatise 
on  Vacuum,  in  The  Thoughts,  Letters  and  Opuscules  of 
Blaise  Pascal,  Translated  by  O.  W.  Wight,  p.  550. 


THE  IDEA  OF  PROGRESS  29 

The  medieval  age  had  no  expectation  of  a 
better  social  life  on  earth.  Charity  was 
common  but  it  was  purely  individual  and 
remedial;  it  did  not  seek  to  understand  or 
to  cure  the  causes  of  social  maladjustment; 
it  was  sustained  by  no  expectation  of  better 
conditions  among  men;  it  was  valued  be- 
cause of  the  giver's  unselfishness  rather  than 
because  of  the  recipient's  gain,  and  in  conse- 
quence it  was  for  the  most  part  unregulated 
alms-giving,  piously  motived  but  inefft- 
ciently  managed.  In  the  eighteenth  century 
a  new  outlook  and  hope  emerged.  If  man 
could  pioneer  new  lands,  learn  new  truthj 
and  make  new  inventions,  why  could  he  not 
devise  new  social  systems  where  human  life 
would  be  freed  from  the  miseries  of  mis- 
government  and  oppression?  With  that 
question  at  last  definitely  rising,  the  long 
line  of  social  reformers  began  which) 
stretched  from  Abbe  de  Saint-Pierre  to  the 
latest  believer  in  the  possibility  of  a  more 
decent  and  salutary  social  life  for  human- 
kind. The  coming  of  democracy  in  govern- 
ment incalculably  stimulated  the  influence 
of  this  social  hope,  for  with  the  old  static 
forms  of  absolute  autocracy  now  broken  up, 
with  power  in  the  hands  of  the  people  to 
seek  as  they  would  "  life,  liberty  and  the 


30      CHRISTIANITY  AND  PROGRESS 

pursuit  of  happiness,"  who  could  put  hmits 
to  the  possibilities?  The  medieval  age  was 
gone ;  the  modern  age  had  come,  and  its  dis- 
tinctive note  was  progress,  with  new  in- 
ventions, new  discoveries,  new  knowledge 
and  new  social  hope. 

It  would  be  a  fascinating  task  to  watch 
these  interweaving  factors  at  their  work 
and  to  trace  their  commingled  influence  as 
slowly  their  involved  significance  became 
clear,  now  to  this  man  and  now  to  that. 
The  best  narrative  that  has  been  written  yet 
of  this  epochal  movement  is  contained  in 
Professor  Bury's  volume  on  "  The  Idea  of 
Progress."  There  one  sees  the  stream  of 
this  progressive  conception  of  life  pushing 
its  way  out  as  through  a  delta  by  way  of 
many  minds,  often  far  separated  yet  flowing 
with  the  same  water.  Some  men  attacked 
the  ancients  and  by  comparison  praised  the 
modern  time  as  Perrault  did  with  "  The 
Age  of  Louis  the  Great  " ;  some  men  fore- 
saw so  clearly  the  possibility  of  man's  con- 
trol over  nature  that  they  dreamed  of  ter- 
restrial Utopias  as  F'rancis  Bacon  did  in 
*'  New  Atlantis  ";  some  men,  like  Descartes, 
sought  to  grasp  the  intellectual  conditions 
of  human  improvement;  and  others,  like 
Condorcet,  became  the  fervid  prophets  of 


THE  IDEA  OF  PROGRESS  31 

human  perfectibility;  some,  like  Turgot,  re- 
examined history  in  terms  of  the  new  ideas; 
and  some,  like  Saint  Simon  and  Comte, 
sought  to  discover  the  law  by  which  all 
progress  moves.  This  new  idea  of  life  and 
history  came  "  by  divers  portions  and  in 
divers  manners,"  but  no  one  can  doubt  its 
arrival.  The  life  of  man  upon  this  earth  was 
no  longer  conceived  as  static;  it  was  pro- 
gressive and  the  possibilities  that  lay  ahead 
made  all  the  achievements  of  the  past  seem 
like  the  play  of  childhood. 

At  last,  in  the  nineteenth  century,  the 
climactic  factor  was  added  which  gathered 
up  all  the  rest  and  embraced  them  in  a  com- 
prehensive philosophy  of  life.  Evolution 
became  a  credible  truth.  No  longer  a  dim 
conjecture,  it  was  established  in  biology, 
and  then  it  spread  its  influence  out  into 
every  area  of  human  thought  until  all 
history  was  conceived  in  genetic  terms  and 
all  the  sciences  were  founded  upon  the  evo- 
lutionary idea.  Growth  became  recognized 
as  the  fundamental  law  of  life.  Nothing  in 
the  universe  without,  or  in  man's  life  within, 
could  longer  be  conceived  as  having  sprung 
full-statured,  like  Minerva  from  the  head  of 
Jove.  All  things  achieved  maturity  by  grad- 
ual processes.     The  world  itself  had  thus 


32       CHRISTIANITY  AND  PROGRESS 

come  into  being,  not  artificially  nailed  to- 
gether like  a  box,  but  growing  like  a  tree, 
putting  forth  ever  new  branches  and  new 
leaves.  When  this  idea  had  firmly  grasped 
the  human  mind,  the  modern  age  had  come 
indeed,  and  progress  was  its  distinctive 
category  of  understanding  and  its  exhilarat- 
ing phrasing  of  human  hope.  Then  came 
the  days  of  mid-Victorian  optimism  with 
songs  like  this  upon  men's  lips: 

"  Every  tiger  madness  muzzled,  every  serpent 
passion  kill'd, 
Every  grim  ravine  a  garden,  every  blazing 
desert  till'd, 

"  Robed  in  universal  harvest  up  to  either  pole 
she  smiles, 
Universal  ocean  softly  washing  all  her  war- 
less  isles."  ^ 

IV 

Any  one,  however,  who  has  lived  with 
discerning  thought  througfil  the  opening 
years  of  the  twentieth  century,  must  be 
aware  that  something  has  happened  to 
chasten  and  subdue  these  wildly  enthusi- 
astic hopes  of  the  mid-Victorian  age. 
Others  beside  the  "  gloomy  dean  "  of  St. 
Paul's,    whether    through    well-considered 


^Alfred  Tennyson:  Locksley  Hall  Sixty  Years  After. 


THE  IDEA  OF  PROGRESS  33 

thought  or  through  the  psychological  shock 
of  the  Great  War,  have  come  to  look  upon 
this  rash,  unmitigated  enthusiasm  about  the 
earth's  future  as  a  fool's  paradise.  At  any 
rate,  no  treatment  of  the  idea  of  progress 
would  be  complete  which  did  not  dwell  upon 
the  limitations  to  that  idea,  now  definitely 
obvious  to  thoughtful  men. 

As  early  as  1879,  in  Saporta's  "  Le  Monde 
des  Plantes,"  we  run  upon  one  serious  set- 
back to  unqualified  expectations  of  progress. 
Men  began  to  take  into  account  the  fact 
that  this  earth  is  not  a  permanent  affair. 
"  We  recognize  from  this  point  of  view  as 
from  others,"  wrote  Saporta,  "  that  the 
world  was  once  young;  then  adolescent; 
that  it  has  even  passed  the  age  of  maturity; 
man  has  come  late,  when  a  beginning  of 
physical  decadence  had  struck  the  globe,  his 
domain."  ^  Here  is  a  fact  to  give  enthusi- 
asm, over  earthly  progress  serious  pause. 
This  earth,  once  uninhabitable,  will  be  unin- 
habitable again.  If  not  by  wholesale  catas- 
trophe, then  by  the  slow  wearing  down  of 
the  sun's  heat,  already  passed  its  climac- 
teric, this  planet,  the  transient  theatre  of 
the  human   drama,  will  be  no  longer  the 


^Comte   de  Saporta:     Le  Monde  des   Plantes  avant 
L' Apparition  de  L'Homme,  p.  109. 


34       CHRISTIANITY  AND  PROGRESS 

scene  of  man's  activity,  but  as  cold  as  the 
moon,  or  as  hot  as  colliding  stars  in  heaven, 
will  be  able  to  sustain  human  life  no  more. 
"  The  grandest  material  works  of  the  human 
race,"  wrote  Faye  in  1884,  '*  will  have  to  be 
effaced  by  degrees  under  the  action  of  a  few 
physical  forces  which  will  survive  man  for  a 
time.  Nothing  will  remain,  not  even  the 
ruins."  ^ 

Every  suggested  clew  to  a  possible  escape 
from  the  grimness  of  the  planet's  dissolution 
has  been  followed  up  with  careful  search. 
The  discovery  of  radioactivity  seemed  to 
promise  endlessly  extended  life  to  our  sun, 
but  Sir  E.  Rutherford,  before  the  Royal 
Astronomical  Society,  has  roundly  denied 
that  the  discovery  materially  lengthens  our 
estimate  of  the  sun's  tenure  of  life  and  has 
said  that  if  the  sun  were  made  of  uranium 
it  would  not  because  of  that  last  five  years 
the  longer  as  a  giver  of  heat.^  Whether  we 
will  or  not,  we  have  no  choice  except  to  face 
the  tremendous  fact,  calmly  set  down  by 
von  Hartmann  in  1904:  *'  The  only  question 
is  w^hether  .  .  .  the  world-process  will  work 
itself  out  slov/ly  in  prodigious  lapse  of  time, 


IH.  Faye :     Sur  L'Origine  du  Monde,  Chapitre  XI,  p. 
i56-7. 

2Joseph  McCabe:    The  End  of  the  World,  p.  112. 


THE  IDEA  OF  PROGRESS  35 

according  to  purely  physical  laws;  or 
whether  it  will  find  its  end  by  means  of 
some  metaphysical  resource  when  it  has 
reached  its  culminating  point.  Only  in  the 
last  case  would  its  end  coincide  with  the 
fulfilment  of  a  purpose  or  object;  in  the  first 
case,  a  long  period  of  purposeless  existence 
would  follow  after  the  culmination  of  life."  ■*■ 
In  a  word,  men  delighted  at  the  prospect 
of  human  progress  on  this  planet  have  made 
an  idol  of  it,  only  to  discover  that  on  a 
transient  earth  it  leads  nowhere  without 
God  and  immortality.  One  disciple  of 
naturalism  recently  denied  his  desire  to  be- 
lieve in  God  because  he  wanted  a  risky  uni- 
verse. But  the  universe  without  God  is  not 
risky;  it  is  a  foregone  conclusion;  the  dice 
are  all  loaded.  After  the  lapse  of  millions 
of  years  which,  however  long  they  be 
stretched  out,  will  ultimately  end,  our  solar 
system  will  be  gone,  without  even  a  memory 
left  of  anything  that  ever  was  dreamed  or 
done  within  it.  That  is  the  inevitable  issue 
of  such  a  "  risky  "  universe.  When  scien- 
tifically-minded men,  therefore,  now  take  a 
long  look  ahead,  the  Utopian  visions  of  the 
mid-Victorian  age  are  not  foremost  in  their 


lEduard  von  Hartmann :  Ausgewahlte  Werke,  viii,  pp. 
572-3  (Leipzig,  1904). 


36       CHRISTIANITY  AND  PROGRESS 

thought.  Rather,  as  one  of  them  recently 
wrote : 

"  One  is  tempted  to  imagine  this  race  of  super- 
men, of  some  millions  of  years  hence,  grimly  con- 
fronting the  issue  of  extinction.  Probably  long  be- 
fore that  time  science  will  have  perfectly  mastered 
the  problem  of  the  sun's  heat,  and  will  be  able  to 
state  precisely  at  what  period  the  radiation  will  sink 
to  a  level  which  would  normally  be  fatal  to  the  liv- 
ing inhabitants  of  the  planets.  Then  will  begin  the 
greatest  of  cosmic  events:  a  drama  that  has  doubt- 
less been  played  numbers  of  times  already  on  the 
stage  of  the  universe :  the  last  stand  of  the  wonder- 
ful microcosm  against  the  brute  force  of  the 
macrocosm 

"  One  conceives  that  our  supermen  will  face  the 
end  philosophically.  Death  is  losing  its  terrors.  The 
race  will  genially  say,  as  we  individuals  do  to-day, 
that  it  has  had  a  long  run.  But  it  will  none-the-less 
make  a  grim  fight.  Life  will  be  worth  living,  for 
everybody,  long  before  that  consummation  is  in 
sight.  The  hovering  demon  of  cold  and  darkness 
will  be  combatted  by  scientific  means  of  which  w^e 
have  not  the  germ  of  a  conception."^ 

If  ever  a  river  ran  out  into  a  desert,  the  river 
of  progressive  hopes,  fed  only  from  springs 
of  materialistic  philosophy,  has  done  so 
here.  At  least  the  Greeks  had  their  immor- 
tality and  the  Hebrews  their  coming  King- 
dom of  God,  but  a  modern  materialist,  with 
all  his  talk  of  progress,  has  neither  the  one 


ijoseph  McCabe:     The  End  of  the  World,  pp.  116- 
117. 


THE  IDEA  OF  PROGRESS  37 

nor  the  other,  nor  anything  to  take  their 
place  as  an  ultimate  for  hope.  Whatever 
else  may  be  true,  progress  on  a  transient 
planet  has  not  done  away  with  the  need  of 
God  and  life  eternal. 

Moreover,  not  only  have  our  twentieth 
century  thought  and  experience  seriously 
qualified  the  meaning  of  progress  on  this 
earth  by  the  limiting  of  the  earth's  duration; 
men  have  come  also  to  distrust,  as  a  quite 
unjustified  flourish  of  sentimentality,  the 
mid-Victorian  confidence  in  an  automatic 
evolution  which  willy-nilly  lifts  human- 
ity to  higher  levels.  Said  Herbert  Spencer, 
"  Progress  is  not  an  accident,  not  a  thing 
within  human  control,  but  a  beneficent  ne- 
cessity." "  This  advancement  is  due  to  the 
working  of  a  universal  law;  ...  in  virtue 
of  that  law  it  must  continue  until  the  state 
we  call  perfection  is  reached.  .  .  .  Thus  the 
ultimate  development  of  the  ideal  man  is 
logically  certain — as  certain  as  any  con- 
clusion in  which  we  place  the  most  implicit 
faith;  ...  so  surely  must  the  things  we 
call  evil  and  immorality  disappear;  so  surely 
must  man  become  perfect."  ^     There  is  no 


^Herbert  Spencer :  Illustrations  of  Universal  Progress, 
Chapter  I,  Progress:  Its  Law  and  Cause,  p.  58;  Social 
Statics,  Part  I,  Chapter  II,  The  Evanescence  of  Evil, 
Sec.  4,  p.  78ff. 


38       CHRISTIANITY  AND  PROGRESS 

scientific  basis  whatever  for  such  a  judg- 
ment.  Evokition  is  not  an  escalator  which, 
whether  or  not  man  run  in  addition  to  its 
lift,  will  inevitably  raise  humanity  to  a 
heaven  on  earth.  Potatoes  in  the  cellar 
shooting  out  long  white  eyes  in  search  of 
light  are  evolving,  but  they  are  evolving 
worse.  Upon  the  basis  of  a  scientific  doc- 
trine of  evolution,  no  idolatrous  supersti- 
tion could  be  much  more  lacking  in  intel- 
lectual support  than  Spencer's  confidence  in 
a  universal,  mechanical,  irresistible  move- 
ment toward  perfection.  The  plain  fact  is 
that  human  history  is  a  strange  blend  of 
progress  and  regress;  it  is  the  story  of  the 
rhythmic  rise  and  fall  of  civiHzations  and 
empires,  of  gains  made  only  to  be  lost  and 
lost  only  to  be  fought  for  once  again.  Even 
when  advance  has  come,  it  has  come  by 
mingled  progress  and  cataclysm  as  water 
passes,  through  gradual  increase  of  warmth, 
from  ice  suddenly  to  liquid  and  from  liquid 
suddenly  to  vapour.  Our  nineteenth  century 
ideas  of  evolution  tended  to  create  in  us  the 
impression  that  humanity  had  made  a 
smooth  and  even  ascent.  We  artificially 
graded  the  ascending  track  of  human  his- 
tory, leveled  and  macadamized  it,  and 
talked  of  inevitable  progress.     Such  senti- 


THE  IDEA  OF  PROGRESS  39 

mental  optimism  has  ceased  even  to  be  com- 
forting, so  utterly  untenable  has  it  become 
to  every  v\^ell-instructed  mind. 

To  such  unfounded  faith  in  automatic 
progress  a  valuable  counterweight  is  ac- 
quaintance with  the  life  of  a  man  like  St. 
Augustine.  As  one  reads  Augustine's  ser- 
mons one  can  hear  in  the  background  the 
collapse  of  a  great  civilization.  One  can  tell 
from  his  discourses  when  the  barbarians 
began  to  move  on  Rome.  One  can  hear 
the  crash  when  Alaric  and  his  hordes  sacked 
the  Eternal  City.  One  can  catch  the  accent 
of  horror  at  the  tidal  waves  of  anarchy  that 
everywhere  swept  in  to  engulf  the  falling 
empire.  "  Horrible  things,"  said  Augustine, 
"  have  been  told  us.  There  have  been  ruins, 
and  fires,  and  rapine,  and  murder,  and  tor- 
ture. That  is  true;  we  have  heard  it  many 
times;  we  have  shuddered  at  all  this  dis- 
aster; we  have  often  wept,  and  we  have 
hardly  been  able  to  console  ourselves."  •'■ 
At  last,  the  empire  in  ruins,  the  old  civiliza- 
tion tottering  to  its  collapse,  Augustine  died 
in  his  episcopal  city  of  Hippo,  while  the 
barbarians  were  hammering  at  the  city 
gates.  Through  such  scenes  this  generation 
too  has  lived  and  has  had  to  learn  again. 


iLouis  Bertrand :    Saint  Augustin,  p.  342. 


40      CHRISTIANITY  AND  PROGRESS 

what  we  never  should  have  forgotten,  that 
human  history  is  not  a  smooth  and  well- 
rolled  lawn  of  soft  ascents;  that  it  is 
mountainous,  precipitous,  terrific — a  coun- 
try where  all  progress  must  be  won  by  dint 
of  intelligence  and  toil,  and  where  it  is  as 
easy  to  lose  the  gains  of  civilization  as  it  is 
to  fall  over  a  cliff  or  to  surrender  a  wheat 
field  to  the  weeds.  An  archeologist  in 
Mesopotamia  talked  with  an  Arab  lad  who 
neither  read,  himself,  nor  knew  any  one 
who  did;  yet  the  lad,  when  he  acknowledged 
this,  stood  within  a  stone's  throw  of  the  site 
where  milleniums  ago  was  one  of  the  great- 
est universities  of  the  ancient  world  and 
where  still,  amid  the  desolation,  one  could 
dig  and  find  the  old  clay  tablets  on  which 
the  children  of  that  ancient  time  had 
learned  to  write.  Progress?  Regress! 
While  history  as  a  whole,  from  the  Cro~ 
Magnon  man  to  the  twentieth  century,  does 
certainly  suggest  a  great  ascent,  it  has  not 
been  an  automatic  levitation.  It  has  been  a 
fight,  tragic  and  ceaseless,  against  destruc- 
tive forces.  This  world  needs  something 
more  than  a  soft  gospel  of  inevitable  prog- 
ress. It  needs  salvation  from  its  ignorance, 
its  sin,  its  inefificiency,  its  apathy,  its  silly 
optimisms  and  its  appalling  carelessness. 


THE  IDEA  OF  PROGRESS  41 

V 

Nevertheless,  though  it  is  true  that  our 
modern  ideas  of  progress  on  this  earth 
never  in  themselves  can  supply  an  adequate 
philosophy  of  life,  and  though  it  is  true  that 
they  do  not  dispense  with,  but  rather  em- 
phasize, our  need  of  God  and  immortality 
and  the  saving  powers  which  Christians  find 
in  Christ,  yet  those  ideas  have  in  them  a 
permanent  contribution  to  the  life  of  man 
from  whose  influence  the  race  cannot  es- 
cape. When  we  have  granted  the  limita- 
tions which  disillusioned  thoughtfulness 
suggests  concerning  progress  upon  this 
earth,  it  still  remains  true  that,  in  our  new 
scientific  control  over  the  latent  resources 
of  the  earth  without  and  over  our  own 
mental  and  moral  processes  within,  we  have 
a  machinery  for  producing  change  that 
opens  up  exciting  prospects  before  human- 
ity. Never  in  our  outlook  upon  man's 
earthly  future  can  we  go  back  to  the  end- 
less cosmic  cycles  of  the  Greeks  or  the 
apocalyptic  expectations  of  the  Hebrews. 
We  are  committed  to  the  hope  of  making 
progress,  and  the  central  problem  which 
Christianity  faces  in  adjusting  her  thought 
and  practice  to  the  modern  age  is  the  prob- 


42       CHRISTIANITY  AND  PROGRESS 

lem  of  coming  to  intelligent  terms  with  this 
dominant  idea. 

These  lectures  are  an  excursion  to  spy 
out  this  land  and  to  see,  if  we  may,  what  the 
idea  of  progress  through  the  scientific  con- 
trol of  life  is  likely  to  mean  and  ought  to 
mean  to  Christianity.  If  this  modern  idea 
is  not  intelligently  guided  in  its  effect  upon 
our  faith  and  practice,  it  will  none  the  less 
have  its  effect  in  haphazard,  accidental,  un- 
guided,  and  probably  ruinous  ways.  If  one 
listens,  for  example,  to  the  preaching  of  lib- 
eral ministers,  one  sees  that  every  accent  of 
their  teaching  has  been  affected  by  this 
prevalent  and  permeating  thought.  The 
God  they  preach  no  longer  sits  afar  like 
Dante's  deity  in  the  stationary  empyrean 
beyond  all  reach  of  change;  their  God  is 
here  in  the  midst  of  the  human  struggle, 
''  their  Captain  in  the  well-fought  fight."  H. 
G.  Wells  may  be  a  poor  theologian  but  he  is 
one  of  our  best  interpreters  of  popular 
thought  and  his  idea  of  God,  marching 
through  the  world  "  like  fifes  and  drums," 
calling  the  people  to  a  progressive  crusade 
for  righteousness,  is  one  which  modern  folk 
find  it  most  easy  to  accept.  He  is  a  God  of 
progress  who  undergirds  our  endeavours 
for  justice  in  the  earth  with  his  power;  who 


THE  IDEA  OF  PROGRESS  43 

fights  in  and  for  and  with  us  against  the 
hosts  of  evil;  whose  presence  is  a  guarantee 
of  ultimate  victory;  and  whose  effect  upon 
us  is  to  send  us  out  to  war  against  ancient 
human  curses,  assured  that  what  ought  to 
be  done  can  be  done. 

As  men's  thought  of  God  has  thus  been 
molded  by  the  idea  of  progress  on  the  earth, 
so,  too,  the  Christ  they  preach  is  not  pri- 
marily, as  of  old,  the  victim  by  whose  sub- 
stitutionary sacrifice  the  race  of  men  has 
found  an  open  door  from  the  bottomless  pit 
of  endless  woe  to  a  blessed  immortality  in 
Paradise.  The  modern  emphasis  is  all  an- 
other way.  Christ  is  the  divine  revealer 
whose  spirit  alone  can  transform  individuals 
and  save  society.  The  sort  of  character  he 
was,  the  life  he  lived,  the  ideas  he  promul- 
gated, are  the  salt  that  can  preserve  human 
life,  the  light  that  can  illumine  the  way  to  a 
kingdom  of  righteousness  on  earth.  He 
himself  is  the  leader  in  the  fight  for  that 
kingdom,  his  sacrifice  part  of  the  price  it 
costs,  his  spirit  the  quality  of  life  that  is  in- 
dispensable to  its  coming,  and  when  v/e 
think  of  him  we  sing, 

"  The  Son  of  God  goes  forth  to  war.  .  .  . 
Who  follows  in  his  train?" 


44.      CHRISTIANITY  AND  PROGRESS 

So,  too,  the  Church,  as  presented  by  typ- 
ical modern  preachers,  is  no  longer  an  ark 
to  which,  from  the  flood  of  wrath  divine,  the 
few  may  flee  for  safety.  If  men  tried  to 
preach  in  that  way,  the  message  would  stick 
in  their  throats.  The  Church  is  primarily 
an  instrument  in  God's  hands  to  bring  per- 
sonal and  social  righteousness  upon  the 
earth.  When  her  massed  influence  over- 
comes a  public  evil  or  establishes  a  public 
good,  men  find  the  justification  of  her  exis- 
tence and  a  first-rate  weapon  of  apologetic 
argument  in  her  behalf.  When  wars  come, 
the  Church  is  blamed  because  she  did  not 
prevent  them;  when  wars  are  over,  she 
takes  counsel  how  she  may  prove  the 
validity  of  her  message  by  making  their  re- 
currence impossible ;  and  the  pitiful  dismem- 
berment of  the  Church  by  sects  and  schisms 
is  hated  and  deplored,  not  so  much  because 
of  economic  waste  or  theological  folly,  as 
because  these  insane  divisions  prevent  social 
effectiveness  in  bringing  the  message  of 
Christ  to  bear  influentially  on  modern  life. 

Likewise,  hope,  deeply  affected  by  mod- 
ern ideas  of  earthly  progress,  is  not  prima- 
rily post-mortem,  as  it  used  to  be.  Men 
believe  in  immortality,  but  it  seems  so  natu- 
rally the  continuance  of  this  present  life  that 


THE  IDEA  OF  PROGRESS  45 

their  responsible  concern  is  chiefly  centered 
here.  The  hopes  which  waken  immediate 
enthusiasm  and  stir  spontaneous  response 
are  hopes  of  righteousness  victorious  upon 
the  earth.  Because  men  believe  in  God, 
they  believe  that  he  has  great  purposes  for 
humankind.  The  course  of  human  history 
is  like  a  river:  sometimes  it  flows  so  slowly 
that  one  would  hardly  know  it  moved  at  all; 
sometimes  bends  come  in  its  channel  so  that 
one  can  hardly  see  in  what  direction  it  in- 
tends to  go;  sometimes  there  are  back- 
eddies  so  that  it  seems  to  be  retreating  on 
itself.  If  a  man  has  no  spiritual  interpreta- 
tion of  life,  if  he  does  not  believe  in  God,  he 
may  w^ell  give  up  hope  and  conclude  that 
the  human  river  is  flowing  all  awry  or  has 
altogether  ceased  to  move.  A  Christian, 
however,  has  a  spiritual  interpretation  of 
life.  He  knows  that  human  history  is  a 
river — not  a  whirlpool,  nor  a  pond,  but  a 
river  flowing  to  its  end.  Just  as,  far  inland, 
we  can  tell  that  the  Hudson  is  flowing  to  the 
sea,  because  the  waters,  when  the  tide 
comes  in,  are  tinctured  with  the  ocean's 
quality,  so  now,  we  believe  that  we  can  tell 
that  the  river  of  human  history  is  flowing 
out  toward  the  kingdom  of  our  God.  Al- 
ready the  setback  of  the  divine  ocean  is  felt 


46       CHRISTIANITY  AND  PROGRESS 

among  us  in  ideals  of  better  life,  personal, 
social,  economic,  national.  That  it  is  Chris- 
tianity's function  to  believe  in  these  ideals, 
to  have  faith  in  the  possibility  of  their  real- 
ization, to  supply  motives  for  their  achieve- 
ment, and  to  work  for  them  with  courage 
and  sacrifice,  is  the  familiar  note  of  modern 
Christian  hope. 

The  modern  apologetic  also  is  tinctured 
with  this  same  quality.  Not  as  of  old  is 
it  a  laboured  working  out  of  metaphysical 
propositions.  Rather,  a  modern  Christian 
preacher's  defense  of  the  Gospel  may  be 
paraphrased  in  some  such  strain  as  this: 
You  never  can  achieve  a  decent  human  life 
upon  this  planet  apart  from  the  Christian 
Gospel.  Neither  outward  economic  comfort 
nor  international  treaties  of  peace  can  save 
the  day  for  humanity.  Not  even  when  our 
present  situation  is  described  as  "  a  race 
between  education  and  catastrophe  "  has  the 
case  been  adequately  stated.  What  kind  of 
education  is  meant?  If  every  man  and 
woman  on  earth  were  a  Ph.  D.,  would  that 
solve  the  human  problem?  Aaron  Burr  had 
a  far  keener  intellect  than  George  Wash- 
ington. So  far  as  swiftness  and  agility  of 
intelligence  were  concerned,  Burr  far  out- 
distanced the  slow-pacing  mind  of  Wash- 


THE  IDEA  OF  PROGRESS  47 

ington.  But,  for  all  that,  as  you  watch 
Burr's  life,  and  many  another's  like  him,  you 
understand  what  Macaulay  meant  when  he 
exclaimed :  "  as  if  history  were  not  made  up 
of  the  bad  actions  of  extraordinary  men,  as 
if  all  the  most  noted  destroyers  and  deceiv- 
ers of  our  species,  all  the  founders  of  arbi- 
trary^ governments  and  false  religions,  had 
not  been  extraordinary  men,  as  if  nine 
tenths  of  the  calamities  which  have  befallen 
the  human  race  had  any  other  origin  than 
the  union  of  high  intelligence  with  low  de- 
sires/' Was  Nebuchadnezzar  of  Babylon 
unintelligent?  Caesar  and  Napoleon — were 
they  unintelligent?  Has  the  most  monu- 
mental and  destructive  selfishness  in  human 
history  been  associated  with  poor  minds? 
No,  with  great  minds,  which,  if  the  world 
was  to  be  saved  their  devastation,  needed 
to  be  reborn  into  a  new  spirit.  The  trans- 
forming gospel  which  religion  brings  is  in- 
dispensable to  a  building  of  the  kingdom  of 
righteousness  upon  the  earth. 

Wherever  one  listens,  then,  to  the  typical 
teaching  of  modern  Christians,  he  finds  him- 
self in  the  atmosphere  of  the  idea  of  prog- 
ress. Men's  thoughts  of  God,  of  Christ,  of 
the  Church,  of  hope,  their  methods  of  apolo- 
getic, are  shaped  to  that  mold — are  often 


48       CHRISTIANITY  AND  PROGRESS 

thinned  out  and  flattened  down  and  made 
cheap  and  unconvincing  by  being  shaped  to 
that  mold — so  that  an  endeavour  to  achieve 
an  intelligent  understanding  of  Christian- 
ity's relationship  with  the  idea  of  progress 
is  in  part  a  defensive  measure  to  save  the 
Gospel  from  being  unintelligently  mauled 
and  mishandled  by  it,  Marcus  Dods,  when 
he  was  an  old  man,  said:  "I  do  not  envy 
those  who  have  to  fight  the  battle  of  Chris- 
tianity in  the  twentieth  century."  Then, 
after  a  moment,  he  added,  "  Yes,  perhaps  I 
do,  but  it  will  be  a  stiff  fight."  It  is  a  stiff 
fight,  and  for  this  reason  if  for  no  other, 
that  before  we  can  get  on  much  further  in  a 
progressive  world  we  must  achieve  with 
wisdom  and  courage  some  fundamental  re- 
constructions in  our  Christian  thinking. 


LECTURE  II 

THE  NEED  FOR  RELIGION 

I 

NE  of  the  first  effects  of  the  idea  of 
progress,  whose  development  our  last 
lecture  traced,  has  been  to  increase 
immeasurably  man's  self  reliance  and  to 
make  him  confident  of  humanity's  power  to 
take  care  of  itself.  At  the  heart  of  the  idea 
of  progress  is  man's  new  scientific  control 
over  life,  and  this  new  mastery,  whereby  the 
w^orld  seems  ready  to  serve  the  purposes  of 
those  who  will  learn  the  laws,  is  the  domi- 
nant influence  in  both  the  intellectual  and 
practical  activities  of  our  age.  That  relig- 
ion, in  consequence,  should  seem  to  many 
of  minor  import,  if  not  quite  negligible,  and 
that  men,  trusting  themselves,  their  knowl- 
edge of  law,  their  use  of  law-abiding  forces, 
their  power  to  produce  change  and  to  im- 
prove conditions,  should  find  less  need  of 
trusting  any  one  except  themselves,  was  in- 
evitable, but  for  all  that  it  is  fallacious. 
Already  we  have  seen  that  a  stumbling  and 

49 


50      CHRISTIANITY  AND  PROGRESS 

"Uneven  progress,  precarious  and  easily  frus- 
trated, taking  place  upon  a  transient  planet, 
goes  but  a  little  way  to  meet  those  elemental 
human  needs  with  which  religious  faith  has 
dealt.  In  our  present  lecture  we  propose  a 
more  specific  consideration  of  this  abiding 
necessity  of  religion  in  a  progressive  world. 
How  difficult  it  is  to  go  back  in  imagina- 
tion to  the  days  before  men  grasped  the 
meaning  of  natural  law!  We  take  gravita- 
tion for  granted  but,  when  Newton  first  pro- 
claimed its  law,  the  artillery  of  orthodox 
pulpits  was  leveled  against  him  in  angry 
consternation.  Said  one  preacher,  Newton 
"  took  from  God  that  direct  action  on  his 
works  so  constantly  ascribed  to  him  in 
Scripture  and  transferred  it  to  material 
mechanism  "  and  he  "  substituted  gravita- 
tion for  Providence."  ■'•  That  preacher  saw 
truly  that  the  discovery  of  natural  law  was 
going  to  make  a  profound  difference  to  re- 
ligion. For  ages  men  had  been  accustomed 
to  look  for  the  revelation  of  supernatural 
power  in  realms  where  they  did  not  know 
the  laws.  And  as  men  were  tempted  to  look 
for  the  presence  of  God  in  realms  where 
they  did  not   know  the  laws,   so   in  those 


^Andrew   D.   White:   A   History  of   the  Warfare  of 
Science  with  Theology  in  Christendom,  Vol.  II,  p.  16. 


THE  NEED  FOR  RELIGION  51 

realms  they  trusted  God  to  do  for  them 
what  they  did  not  know  how  to  do  for 
themselves. 

Then  men  began  discovering  natural  laws, 
and  every  time  they  laid  their  hands  on  a 
new  natural  law  they  laid  their  hands  on  a 
new  law-abiding  force  and  began  doing  for 
themselves  things  of  which  their  fathers 
had  never  dreamed.  Stories  of  old-time 
miracles  are  overpassed  in  our  modern  days. 
Did  Aladdin  once  rub  a  magic  lamp  and 
build  a  palace  ?  To-day,  knowledge  of  engi- 
neering laws  enables  us  to  achieve  results 
that  would  put  Aladdin  quite  to  shame.  He 
never  dreamed  a  Woolworth  Tower.  Did 
the  Israelites  once  cross  the  Red  Sea  dry- 
shod?  One  thing,  however,  they  never 
would  have  hoped  to  do:  to  cross  under  and 
over  the  Hudson  River  day  after  day  in 
multitudes,  dry-shod.  Did  an  axe-head  float 
once  when  Elisha  threw  a  stick  into  the 
water?  But  something  no  Elisha  ever 
dreamed  of  seeing  we  see  continually:  iron 
ships  navigating  the  ocean  as  though  it  were 
their  natural  element.  Did  Joshua  once 
prolong  the  day  for  battle  by  the  staying  of 
the  sun?  Yet  Joshua  could  never  have  con- 
ceived an  habitual  lighting  of  the  city's 
homes  and  streets  until  by  night  they  are 


52       CHRISTIANITY  AND  PROGRESS 

more  brilliant  than  by  day.  Did  Jericho's 
walls  once  fall  at  the  united  shout  of  a  be- 
sieging people?  Those  childlike  besiegers, 
however,  never  dreamed  of  guns  that  could 
blast  Jerichos  to  pieces  from  seventy  miles 
away.  Huxley  was  right  when  he  said  that 
our  highly  developed  sciences  have  given 
us  a  command  over  the  course  of  non- 
human  nature  greater  than  that  once  at- 
tributed to  the  magicians. 

The  consequence  has  been  revolutionary. 
Old  cries  of  dependence  upon  God  grow 
unreal  upon  the  lips  of  multitudes.  Some- 
times without  knowing  it,  often  without 
wanting  it,  men  are  drawn  by  the  drift  of 
modern  thought  away  from  all  confidence  in 
God  and  all  consciousness  of  religious  need. 
Consider  two  pictures.  The  first  is  an  epi- 
demic in  New  England  in  the  seventeenth 
century.  Everybody  is  thinking  about  God; 
the  churches  are  full  and  days  are  passed  in 
fasting  and  agonizing  prayer.  Only  one 
way  of  getting  rid  of  such  an  epidemic  is 
known:  men  must  gain  new  favour  in  the 
sight  of  God.  The  second  picture  is  an  epi- 
demic in  New  England  in  the  twentieth 
century.  The  churches  are  not  full — they 
are  closed  by  official  order  and  popular  con- 
sent to  prevent  the  spread  of  germs.    Com- 


THE  NEED  FOR  RELIGION  53 

paratively  few  people  are  appealing  to  God; 
almost  everybody  is  appealing"  to  the  health 
commissioner.  Not  many  people  are  rely- 
ing upon  religion;  everybody  is  relying 
upon  science.  As  one  faces  the  pregnant 
significance  of  that  contrast,  one  sees  that 
in  important  sections  of  our  modern  life 
science  has  come  to  occupy  the  place  that 
God  used  to  have  in  the  reliance  of  our  fore- 
fathers. For  the  dominant  fact  of  our  gen- 
eration is  power  over  the  world  which  has 
been  put  into  our  hands  through  the  knowl- 
edge of  laws,  and  the  consequence  is  that 
the  scientific  mastery  of  life  seems  man's  in- 
dispensable and  sufficient  resource. 

The  issue  is  not  far  to  seek.  Such  has 
been  public  confidence  in  the  efficacy  and 
adequacy  of  this  scientific  control  of  life  to 
meet  all  human  needs,  that  in  multitudes  of 
minds  religion  has  been  crowded  to  the 
wall.  Why  should  we  trust  God  or  concern 
ourselves  w^ith  the  deep  secrets  of  religious 
faith,  if  all  our  need  is  met  by  learning  laws, 
blowing  upon  our  hands,  and  going  to 
work?  So  even  Christians  come  secretly  to 
look  upon  their  Christianity  as  a  frill,  some- 
thing gracious  but  not  indispensable,  pleas- 
ant to  live  with  but  not  impossible  to  live 
without.       Christian    preachers    lose    their 


64       CHRISTIANITY  AND  PROGRESS 

ability,  looking  first  upon  their  spiritual 
message  and  then  upon  their  fellow  men,  to 
feel  how  desperately  the  two  need  each 
other.  Religion  has  become  an  *'  elective  in 
the  university  of  life."  But  religion  cannot 
persist  as  a  frill;  it  either  is  central  in  its 
importance  or  else  it  is  not  true  at  all.  Its 
great  days  come  only  when  it  is  seen  to  be 
indispensable.  We  may  use  what  artificial 
respiration  we  w^ill  upon  the  Church,  the 
days  of  the  Church's  full  power  will  not 
come  until  the  conviction  lays  hold  upon  her 
that  the  endeavour  to  found  civilization 
upon  a  materialistic  science  is  leading  us  to 
perdition;  that  man  needs  desperately  the 
ministry  of  religion,  its  insight  into  life's 
meanings,  its  control  over  life's  use,  its  in- 
ward power  for  life's  moral  purposes;  that 
man  never  needed  this  more  than  now, 
when  the  scientific  control  of  life  is  arm- 
ing him  with  so  great  ability  to  achieve  his 
aims. 

II 

As  we  try  to  discern  wherein  man's  need 
of  religion  lies  with  reference  to  the  scien- 
tific control  of  life,  let  us  start  with  the 
proposition  that,  when  we  have  all  the  facts 
which  science  can  discover,  we  still  need  a 


THE  NEED  FOR  RELIGION  65 

spiritual  interpretation  of  the  facts.  All  our 
experiences  are  made  up  of  two  elements : 
first,  the  outward  circumstance,  and  second, 
the  inward  interpretation.  On  the  one  side 
is  our  environment,  the  world  we  live  in,  the 
things  that  befall  us,  the  kaleidoscopic 
changes  of  fortune  in  the  scenery  of  which 
our  lives  are  set.  On  the  other  side  are  the 
inw^ard  interpretations  that  we  give  to  this 
outward  circumstance.  Experience  is  com- 
pounded of  these  two  elements. 

This  clearly  is  true  in  ordinary  living. 
Two  men,  let  us  say,  go  to  their  physicians 
and  are  told  that  they  have  only  a  few 
months  to  live.  This  is  the  fact  which  faces 
both  of  them.  As  we  watch  them,  however, 
we  are  at  once  aware  that  this  fact  is  not 
the  whole  of  their  experience.  One  of  the 
men  crumples  up ;  he  "  collapses  into  a  yield- 
ing mass  of  plaintiveness  and  fear."  Think- 
ing of  the  event  which  he  is  facing,  he  sees 
nothing  there  but  horror.  That  is  his  in- 
terpretation of  it.  The  other  man  so  looks 
upon  the  event  which  is  coming  that  his 
family,  far  from  having  to  support  his  spirit, 
are  supported  by  him.  He  buoys  them  up ; 
he  carries  them  along;  his  faith  and  courage 
are  contagious;  and  when  he  thinks  of  his 
death  it  appears  in  his  eyes  a  great  adven- 


56       CHRISTIANITY  AND  PROGRESS 

ture  concerning  which  the  old  hymn  told 
the  truth : 

"  It  were  a  well-spent  journey 
Though  seven  deaths  lay  between." 

That  is  his  interpretation.  As  we  regard 
the  finished  experiences  of  these  two  men, 
we  see  clearly  that,  while  the  same  fact  lay 
at  the  basis  of  both,  it  was  the  inward  in- 
terpretation that  determined  the  quality  of 
the  experience. 

This  power  to  transform  facts  so  that 
they  will  be  no  longer  merely  facts,  but 
facts  plus  an  interpretation,  is  one  of  the 
most  distinctive  and  significant  elements  in 
human  life.  The  animals  do  not  possess  it. 
An  event  befalls  a  dog  and,  when  the  dog  is 
through  with  it,  the  event  is  what  it  was 
before.  The  dog  has  done  nothing  to  it. 
But  the  same  event  befalls  a  man  and  at 
once  something  begins  to  happen  to  it.  It 
is  clothed  in  the  man's  thought  about  it;  it 
is  dressed  in  his  appreciation  and  under- 
standing; it  is  transformed  by  his  interpre- 
tations. The  event  comes  out  of  that  man's 
life  something  altogether  different  from 
what  it  was  when  it  went  in.  The  man  can 
do  almost  anything  with  that  event.  For 
our  experiences  do  not  fall  into  our  lives  in 


THE  NEED  FOR  RELIGION  57 

single  lumps,  like  meteors  from  a  distant 
sky  of  fate;  our  experiences  always  are 
made  up  of  the  fortunes  that  befall  us  and 
the  interpretations  that  we  give  to  them. 

So  far  as  the  relative  importance  of  these 
two  factors  is  concerned,  we  may  see  the 
truth  in  the  application  of  our  thought  to 
happiness.  If  there  is  any  area  in  human 
experience  where  the  outward  circumstance 
might  be  supposed  to  control  the  results,  it 
is  the  realm  of  happiness ;  yet  probably  nine- 
tenths  of  the  problem  of  happiness  lies,  not 
in  the  outward  event,  but  in  the  inward  in- 
terpretation. If  we  could  describe  those 
conditions  in  which  the  happiest  people 
whom  we  have  known  have  lived,  can  any 
one  imagine  the  diversity  of  environment 
that  would  be  represented  in  our  accounts? 
Let  them  move  in  procession  before  the 
eyes  of  our  imagination,  those  happy  folk 
whose  friendship  has  been  the  benediction 
of  our  lives !  What  a  motley  company  they 
are !  For  some  are  blind,  and  some  are 
crippled,  and  some  are  invalid ;  not  many  are 
rich  and  fortunate ;  many  are  poor — a  com- 
pany of  handicapped  but  radiant  spirits 
whose  victorious  lives,  like  the  burning 
bush  which  Moses  saw,  have  made  in  a 
desert  a  spot  of  holy  ground.     If,  now,  we 


68       CHRISTIANITY  AND  PROGRESS 

ask  why  it  is  that  happiness  can  be  so  amaz- 
ingly independent  of  outward  circumstance, 
this  is  the  answer:  every  experience  has  two 
factors,  the  fortune  that  befalls  and  the  in- 
ward interpretation  of  it;  and,  while  we 
often  cannot  control  the  fortune,  we  always 
can  help  with  the  interpretation.  That  is 
in  our  power.  That  is  the  throne  of  our 
sovereignty  over  our  lives. 

Ill 

The  deep  need  of  a  worthy  interpretation 
of  life  is  just  as  urgent  in  a  world  where  the 
idea  of  progress  reigns  as  in  any  other,  and 
to  supply  that  need  is  one  of  the  major 
functions  of  religion.  For  religion  is  some- 
thing more  than  all  the  creeds  that  have  en- 
deavoured to  express  its  thought.  Religion 
is  something  more  than  all  the  organiza- 
tions that  have  tried  to  incarnate  its  pur- 
poses. Religion  is  the  human  spirit,  by 
the  grace  of  God,  seeking  and  finding  an 
interpretation  of  experience  that  puts  sense 
and  worth,  dignity,  elevation,  joy,  and  hope 
into  life. 

A  body  of  students  recently  requested  an 
address  upon  the  subject:  *'  What  is  the  use 
of  religion  anyway?"  The  group  of  ideas 
behind  the  question  is  not  hard  to  guess: 


THE  NEED  FOR  RELIGION  69 

that  science  gives  us  all  the  facts,  that  facts 
and  their  laws  are  all  we  need,  that  the 
scientific  control  of  life  guarantees  prog- 
ress, and  that  religion  therefore  is  super- 
fluous. But  in  such  a  statement  one  tower- 
ing interrogation  has  been  neglected :  what 
about  the  interpretation  of  the  very  facts 
which  science  does  present?  Could  not  one 
address  himself  to  the  question  of  those 
students  in  some  such  way  as  this?  You 
say  that  science  has  disclosed  to  us  the  lei- 
sureliness  of  the  evolving  universe.  Come 
back,  then,  on  the  long  road  to  the  rear  on 
which  Bishop  Usher's  old  date  of  creation 
is  a  way  station  an  infinitesimal  distance 
behind  us;  come  back  until  together  we 
stand  at  the  universe's  postern  gate  and 
look  out  into  the  mystery  whence  all  things 
came,  where  no  scientific  investigation  can 
ever  go,  where  no  one  knows  the  facts. 
What  do  you  make  of  it?  Two  voices  rise 
in  answer.  One  calls  the  world  "  a  mechan- 
ical process,  in  which  we  may  discover  no 
aim  or  purpose  whatever."  ^  And  another 
voice  says: 

"  The  heavens  declare  the  glory  of  God ; 
And  the  firmament  showeth  his  handiwork."^ 


iQuoted   in   the   Hibbert  Journal,   Vol.   Ill,   January 
1905,  p.  296. 
sPsalm  19:1. 


60       CHRISTIANITY  AND  PROGRESS 

That  is  not  a  difference  in  facts,  upon  which 
we  can  get  our  hands.  That  is  a  difference 
in  the  interpretation  of  the  facts. 

Or  come  forward  together  to  look  into 
that  mystery  ahead,  toAvard  which  this  uni- 
verse and  we  within  it  are  so  prodigiously 
plunging  on.  Do  we  not  often  feel,  upon 
this  earth  whirling  through  space,  like  men 
and  women  who  by  some  weird  chance  have 
found  themselves  upon  a  ship,  ignorant  of 
their  point  of  departure  and  of  their  desti- 
nation? For  all  the  busyness  with  w^hich 
we  engage  in  many  tasks,  we  cannot  keep 
ourselves  from  slipping  back  at  times  to  the 
ship's  stern  to  look  out  along  its  wake  and 
wonder  whence  we  came,  or  from  going  at 
times  also  to  its  prow  to  wonder  whither  we 
are  headed.  What  do  you  make  of  it? 
Toward  what  sort  of  haven  is  this  good  ship 
earth  sailing — a  port  fortunate  or  ill?  Or 
may  it  be  there  is  no  haven,  only  endless 
sailing  on  an  endless  sea  by  a  ship  that 
never  will  arrive  ?  So  questioning,  we  listen 
to  conflicting  voices.  One  says  there  is  no 
future  except  ultimate  annihilation,  and  an- 
other voice  sings : 

"All  we  have  willed  or  hoped  or  dreamed 
of  good,  shall  exist." 

That  is  not  a  difference  in  the  facts,  that 


THE  NEED  FOR  RELIGION  61 

eyes  can  see  and  hands  handle ;  that  is  a  dif- 
ference in  the  interpretation  of  the  facts. 

Or  from  such  large  considerations  come 
down  into  some  familiar  experience  of  daily 
life.  Here  is  a  man  having"  a  hard  battle 
between  right  and  wrong.  There  is  no 
more  impressive  sight  on  earth  to  one  who 
looks  at  it  with  understanding  eyes.  What 
do  you  make  of  this  mysterious  sense  of 
duty  which  lays  its  magisterial  hand  upon 
us  and  will  not  be  denied?  At  once  various 
voices  rise.  Haeckel  says  the  sense  of  duty 
is  a  ''  long  series  of  phyletic  modifications  of 
the  phronema  of  the  cortex."  ^  That  is  his 
interpretation.     And  Wordsworth: 

*'  Stern  Daughter  of  the  Voice  of  God ! 
O  Duty !" 

This  sharp  contrast  is  not  a  difference  be- 
tween facts,  which  can  be  pinned  down  as 
the  Lilhputians  pinned  down  Gulliver;  it  is 
a  difference  in  the  interpretation  of  the 
facts. 

Or  let  us  go  together  up  some  high  hill 
from  which  we  can  look  out  upon  the 
strange  history  of  humankind.  We  see  its 
agonies   and  wars,   its   rising  empires   fol- 


lErnst  Haeckel :  The  Wonders  of  Life,  p.  413. 


62       CHRISTIANITY  AND  PROGRESS 

lowed  by  their  ruinous  collapse,  and  yet  a 
mysterious  advance,  too,  as  though  man- 
kind, swinging  up  a  spiral,  met  old  questions 
upon  a  higher  level,  so  that  looking  back  to 
the  Stone  Age,  for  all  the  misery  of  this 
present  time,  we  would  be  rather  here  than 
there.  What  can  we  make  of  it?  Haupt- 
mann's  Michael  Kramer  says  "  All  this  life 
is  the  shuddering  of  a  fever."  And  Paul 
says,  "  the  eternal  purpose  which  he  pur- 
posed in  Christ."  That  is  not  a  difference 
in  the  facts.  It  is  a  difference  in  the  inter- 
pretation of  the  facts. 

Yet  once  more,  come  into  the  presence  of 
death.  The  facts  that  human  eyes  can  see 
are  plain  enough,  but  what  can  we  make  of 
it — this  standing  on  the  shore,  waving  fare- 
well to  a  friendly  ship  that  loses  itself  over 
the  rim  of  the  world?  Says  Thomson  of 
the  world's  treatment  of  man, 

"It  grinds  him   some  slow  years  of  bitter 
breath, 
Then  grinds  him  back  into  eternal  death." 

And  Paul  says :  "  This  corruptible  must  put 
on  incorruption,  and  this  mortal  must  put 
on  immortality.  But  when  this  corruptible 
shall  have  put  on  incorruption,  and  this 
mortal  shall  have  put  on  immortality,  then 


THE  NEED  FOR  RELIGION  63 

shall  come  to  pass  the  saying-  that  is  writ- 
ten, Death  is  swallowed  up  in  victory." 
That  is  not  a  contrast  between  facts ;  that  is 
a  contrast  between  interpretations  of  facts. 
Is  it  not  plain  why  religion  has  such  an 
unbreakable  hold  upon  the  human  mind? 
The  funeral  of  Christianity  has  been  pre- 
dicted many  times  but  each  time  the  de- 
ceased has  proved  too  lively  for  the  obse- 
quies. In  the  middle  of  the  eighteenth 
century  they  said  that  Christianity  had  one 
foot  in  the  grave,  but  then  came  the  amaz- 
ing revival  of  religious  life  under  the  Wes- 
leys.  In  the  middle  of  the  last  century  one 
wiseacre  said,  "  In  fifty  years  3^our  Chris- 
tianity will  have  died  out  " ;  yet,  for  all  our 
failures,  probably  Christianity  in  all  its 
history  has  never  made  more  progress  than 
in  the  last  half  century.  If  you  ask  v/hy, 
one  reason  is  clear:  man  cannot  live  in  a 
universe  of  uninterpreted  facts.  The  scien- 
tific approach  to  life  is  not  enough.  It  does 
not  cover  all  the  ground.  Men  want  to 
know  what  life  spiritually  means  and  they 
want  to  know  that  it  "  means  intensely,  and 
means  good."  Facts  alone  are  like  pieces 
of  irritating-  g"rit  that  get  into  the  oyster 
shell;  the  pearl  of  life  is  created  by  the  in- 
terpretations which  the  facts  educe. 


64.      CHRISTIANITY  AND  PROGRESS 

In  this  difference  between  the  facts  of  ex- 
perience and  their  interpretations  lies  the 
secret  of  the  contrast  between  our  two 
words  existence  and  life.  Even  before  we 
define  the  difference,  we  feel  it.  To  exist  is 
one  thing;  to  live  is  another.  Existence  is 
comprised  of  the  bare  facts  of  life  alone — 
the  universe  in  which  we  live,  our  heritage 
and  birth,  our  desires  and  their  satisfac- 
tions, growth,  age  and  death.  All  the  facts 
that  science  can  display  before  us  comprise 
existence.  But  life  is  something  more. 
Life  is  existence  clothed  in  spiritual  mean- 
ings; existence  seen  with  a  worthy  purpose 
at  the  heart  of  it  and  hope  ahead,  existence 
informed  by  the  spirit's  insights  and  under- 
standings, transfigured  and  glorified  by  the 
spirit's  faiths  and  hopes.  It  follows,  there- 
fore, that  while  existence  is  given  us  to  start 
with,  life  is  a  spiritual  achievement.  A  man 
must  take  the  facts  of  his  existence  whether 
he  wants  to  or  not,  but  he  makes  his  life  by 
the  activity  of  his  soul.  The  facts  of  exis- 
tence are  like  so  much  loose  type,  which  can 
be  set  up  to  many  meanings.  One  man 
leaves  those  facts  in  chaotic  disarrangement 
or  sets  them  up  into  cynical  affirmations, 
and  he  exists.  But  another  man  takes  the 
same  facts  and  by  spiritual  insight  makes 


THE  NEED  FOR  RELIGION  65 

them  mean  gloriously,  and  he  lives  indeed. 
To  suppose  that  mankind  ever  can  be  satis- 
fied with  existence  only  and  can  be  called 
off  from  the  endeavour  to  achieve  this  more 
abundant  life,  is  utterly  to  misconceive  the 
basic  facts  of  human  nature.  And  this  pro- 
found need  for  a  spiritual  interpretation  of 
life  is  not  satisfied  by  an  idea  of  temporal 
progress,  stimulated  by  a  few  circumstances 
which  predispose  our  minds  to  immediate 
expectancy. 

IV 
When,  therefore,  any  one  asserts  the  ade- 
quacy of  the  scientific  approach  to  life,  one 
answer  stands  ready  to  our  hand:  science 
deals  primarily  with  facts  and  their  laws,  not 
with  their  spiritual  interpretations.  To  put 
the  same  truth  in  another  way,  science  deals 
with  one  specially  abstracted  aspect  of  the 
facts ;  it  drains  them  of  their  qualitative  ele- 
ments and,  reducing  them  to  their  quanti- 
tative elements,  it  proceeds  to  weigh  and 
measure  them  and  state  their  laws.  It 
moves  in  the  realm  of  actualities  and  not  in 
the  realm  of  values.  One  science,  for  ex- 
ample, takes  a  gorgeous  sunset  and  reduces 
it  to  the  constituent  ether  waves  that  cause 
the  colour.     What  it  says  about  the  sunset 


66       CHRISTIANITY  AND  PROGRESS 

is  true,  but  it  is  not  the  whole  truth.  Ask 
anybody  who  has  ever  seen  the  sun  riding 
like  a  golden  galleon  down  the  western  sea ! 
Another  science  takes  a  boy  and  reduces 
him  to  his  Bertillon  measurements  and  at 
the  top  of  the  statistics  writes  his  name, 
"John  Smith."  That  is  the  truth  about 
John  Smith,  but  it  is  not  the  whole  truth. 
Ask  his  mother  and  see!  Another  science 
takes  our  varied  and  vibrant  mental  life  and 
reduces  it  to  its  physical  basis  and  states  its 
laws.  That  is  the  truth  about  our  mental 
life,  but  it  is  not  the  whole  truth.  What  is 
more,  it  is  not  that  part  of  the  truth  by 
which  men  really  live.  For  men  live  by 
love  and  joy  and  hope  and  faith  and  spir- 
itual insight.  When  these  things  vanish 
life  is 


"  a  tale 
Told  by  an  idiot,  full  of  sound  and  fury. 
Signifying  nothing." 


When  a  man  takes  that  quantitative  as- 
pect of  reality,  which  is  the  special  province 
of  natural  science,  as  though  it  were  the 
whole  of  reality,  he  finds  himself  in  a  world 
where  the  physical  forces  are  in  control. 
We,  ourselves,  according  to  this  aspect  of 


THE  NEED  FOR  RELIGION  67 

life,  are  the  product  of  physical  forces — 
marionettes,  dancing  awhile  because  phys- 
ical forces  are  pulling  on  the  strings.  In  a 
word,  when  a  man  takes  that  quantitative 
aspect  of  reality,  which  natural  science  pre- 
sents, as  though  it  were  the  whole  of  real- 
ity, he  becomes  a  materialistic  fatalist,  and 
on  that  basis  we  cannot  permanently  build 
either  personal  character  or  a  stable  civiliza- 
tion. It  is  not  difficult,  then,  to  see  one 
vital  significance  of  Jesus  Christ:  he  has 
given  us  the  most  glorious  Interpretation 
of  life's  meaning  that  the  sons  of  men 
have  ever  had.  The  fatherhood  of  God, 
the  friendship  of  the  Spirit,  the  sover- 
eignty of  righteousness,  the  law  of  love,  the 
glory  of  service,  the  coming  of  the  King- 
dom, the  eternal  hope — there  never  was  an 
interpretation  of  life  to  compare  with  that. 
If  life  often  looks  as  though  his  interpreta- 
tion were  too  good  to  be  true,  we  need  not 
be  surprised.  Few  things  in  the  universe 
are  as  superficially  they  look.  The  earth 
looks  flat  and,  as  long  as  we  gaze  on  it,  it 
never  will  look  any  other  way,  but  it  is 
spherical  for  all  that.  The  earth  looks  sta- 
tionary and  if  we  live  to  be  as  old  as  Me- 
thuselah we  never  will  see  it  move,  but  it  is 
moving — seventy-five    times    faster  than   a 


68       CHRISTIANITY  AND  PROGRESS 

cannon  ball!  The  sun  looks  as  though  it 
rose  in  the  east  and  set  in  the  west,  and  we 
never  can  make  it  look  any  other  way,  but 
it  does  not  rise  nor  set  at  all.  So  far  as  this 
earth  is  concerned,  the  sun  is  standing  still 
enough.  We  look  as  though  we  walked 
with  our  heads  up  and  our  feet  down,  and 
we  never  can  make  ourselves  look  other- 
wise, but  someone  finding  a  safe  stance  out- 
side this  whirling  sphere  would  see  us  half 
the  time  walking  with  our  heads  down  and 
our  feet  up.  Few  things  are  ever  the  way 
they  look,  and  the  end  of  all  scientific  re- 
search, as  of  all  spiritual  insight,  is  to  get 
behind  the  way  things  look  to  the  way 
things  are.  Walter  Pater  has  a  remember- 
able  phrase,  "  the  hiddenness  of  perfect 
things."  One  meaning,  therefore,  which 
Christ  has  for  Christians  lies  in  the  realm 
of  spiritual  interpretation.  He  has  done  for 
us  there  what  Copernicus  and  Galileo  did  in 
astronomy:  he  has  moved  us  out  from  our 
flat  earth  into  his  meaningful  universe,  full 
of  moral  worth  and  hope.  He  has  become 
to  us  in  this,  our  inner  need,  what  the  lumi- 
nous phrase  of  the  Book  of  Job  describes, 
"  An  interpreter,  one  among  a  thousand." 
And  in  spite  of  all  our  immediate  expec- 
tancy, born  out  of  our  scientific  control  of 


THE  NEED  FOR  RELIGION  69 

life,    mankind    never    needed    that    service 
more  than  now. 

V 

There  is  a  second  proposition  to  which 
we  should  attend  as  we  endeavour  to  define 
the  need  for  religion  with  reference  to  the 
scientific  mastery  of  life.  Consider  why  so 
often  men  are  tempted  to  suppose  that 
science  is  adequate  for  human  purposes.  Is 
it  not  because  science  supplies  men  with 
power?  Steam,  electricity,  petroleum, 
radium — with  what  progressive  mastery 
over  the  latent  resources  of  the  universe 
does  science  move  from  one  area  of  energy 
to  another,  until  in  the  imagination  of  re- 
cent generations  she  has  seemed  to  stand 
saying:  all  power  is  given  unto  me  in 
heaven  and  in  earth.  With  such  power  to 
bestow,  is  she  not  our  rightful  mistress? 
But  who  that  has  walked  with  discerning 
eyes  through  these  last  few  years  can  any 
longer  be  beguiled  by  that  fallacious  vision? 
Look  at  what  we  are  doing  with  this  new 
power  that  science  has  given  us !  The  busi- 
ness to  which  steel  and  steam  and  electric- 
ity, explosives  and  poisons  have  recently 
been  put  does  not  indicate  that  humanity's 
problem  is  solved  when  new  power  is  put 


70       CHRISTIANITY  AND  PROGRESS 

into  our  hands.  Even  the  power  of  wide- 
spread communication  can  so  be  used  that  a 
war  which  began  in  Serajevo  will  end  with 
lads  from  Kamchatka  and  Bombay  blasted 
to  pieces  by  the  same  shell  on  a  French 
battlefield.  Even  the  power  of  modern 
finance  can  be  so  used  that  nations  will  ex- 
haust the  credit  of  generations  yet  unborn 
in  waging  war.  How  some  folk  keep  their 
cheap  and  easy  optimism  about  humanity's 
use  of  its  new  energies  is  a  mystery.  ^Ve 
have  come  pretty  near  to  ruining  ourselves 
with  them  already.  If  we  do  not  achieve 
more  spiritual  control  over  them  than  we 
have  yet  exhibited  we  will  ruin  ourselves 
with  them  altogether.  Once  more  in  his- 
tory a  whole  civilization  will  commit  suicide 
like  Saul  falling  on  his  own  sword. 

The  scientific  control  of  life,  by  itself, 
creates  more  problems  than  it  solves.  The 
problem  of  international  disarmament,  for 
example,  has  been  forced  on  us  by  the  fear  of 
that  perdition  to  the  suburbs  of  which  our 
race  has  manifestly  come  through  the  misuse 
of  scientific  knowledge.  Humanity  is  dis- 
turbed about  itself  because  it  has  discovered 
that  it  is  in  possession  of  power  enough  to 
wreck  the  world.  Never  before  did  mankind 
have  so  much  energy  to  handle.    Multitudes 


THE  NEED  FOR  RELIGION  71 

of  people,  dubious  as  to  whether  disarma- 
ment is  practical,  are  driven  like  shuttles 
back  and  forth  between  that  doubt,  upon  the 
one  side,  and  the  certainty,  upon  the  other, 
that  armament  is  even  less  practical.  The 
statisticians  have  been  at  work  upon  this  last 
war  and  their  figures,  like  the  measurements 
of  the  astronomers,  grow  to  a  size  so  colossal 
that  the  tentacles  of  our  imaginations  slip 
off  them  when  we  try  to  grasp  their  size. 
The  direct  costs  of  this  last  war,  which  left 
us  with  more  and  harder  dif^culties  than  we 
had  at  the  beginning,  were  about  $186,000,- 
000,000.  Is  that  practical?  At  the  begin- 
ning of  1922  almost  all  the  nations  in 
Europe,  although  by  taxation  they  were 
breaking  their  people's  financial  backs,  were 
spending  far  more  than  their  income,  and  in 
the  United  States,  far  and  away  the  richest 
nation  on  the  planet,  we  faced  an  enormous 
deficit.  Is  that  practical?  In  this  situation, 
with  millions  of  people  unemployed,  with 
starvation  rampant,  with  social  revolution 
stirring  in  every  country — not  because  peo- 
ple are  bad,  not  because  they  impatiently 
love  violence,  but  because  they  cannot  stand 
forever  the  social  strain  and  economic  con- 
sequence of  war — what  were  we  doing? 
We  were  launching  battleships  which  cost 


72       CHRISTIANITY  AND  PROGRESS 

$42,000,000  to  build,  which  cost  $2,000,000 
a  year  to  maintain  and  which,  in  a  few  years, 
would  be  towed  out  to  sea  to  be  used  as  an 
experimental  target  to  try  out  some  new 
armour-piercing  shell.  I  wonder  if  our 
children's  children  will  look  back  on  that 
spectacle  and  call  it  practical.  In  1912  the 
naval  expenses  of  this  country  were  about 
$136,000,000.  In  1921  our  naval  expenses 
v\^ere  about  $641,000,000 — approximately 
five  times  greater  in  nine  years.  So  over  all 
the  earth  war  preparations  were  pyramiding 
with  an  ever  accelerating  momentum.  And 
because  any  man  can  see  that  w^e  must  stop 
sometime,  we  have  been  trying  desperately 
to  stop  now;  to  turn  our  backs  upon  this 
mad  endeavour  to  build  civilization  upon  a 
materialistic  basis,  bulwarked  by  physical 
force;  to  turn  our  faces  toward  spiritual 
forces,  fair  play,  reasonable  conference, 
good-will,  service  and  co-operation. 

Yet  how  hard  it  is  to  make  the  change 
effective!  Long  ages  ago  in  the  primeval 
jungle,  the  dogs'  ancestors  used  to  turn 
around  three  times  in  the  thicket  before 
they  lay  down,  that  they  might  make  a  com- 
fortable spot  to  nestle  in,  and  now  your 
highbred  Pekingese  will  turn  around  three 
times  upon  his  silken  cushion  although  there 


THE  NEED  FOR  RELIGION  73 

is  no  earthly  reason  why  he  should.  So 
difficult  is  it  to  breed  beasts  and  men  out 
of  their  inveterate  habits.  So  hard  is  it 
going  to  be  to  make  men  give  up  the  idea 
that  force  is  a  secure  foundation  for  inter- 
national relationships.  Yet  somehow  that 
change  must  be  made.  They  are  having 
trouble  with  the  housing  problem  in  Tokyo 
and  the  reason  is  simple.  Tokyo  is  built  on 
earthquake  ground  and  it  is  insecure.  You 
cannot  put  great  houses  on  unstable  founda- 
tions. One  story,  two  stories,  three  stories 
— that  is  about  as  high  as  they  dare  go.  But 
in  New  York  City  one  sees  the  skyscrapers 
reaching  up  their  sixty  stories  into  the  air. 
The  explanation  is  not  difficult:  Manhattan 
Island  is  solid  rock.  If  you  are  going  to 
build  great  structures  you  must  have  great 
foundations.  And  civilization  is  a  vast  and 
complicated  structure.  We  cannot  build  it 
on  physical  force.  That  is  too  shaky.  We 
must  build  it  upon  spiritual  foundations. 

There  are  those  who  suppose  that  this 
can  be  done  by  progress  through  the  scien- 
tific control  of  life,  and  w^ho  treat  religion 
as  a  negligible  element.  Such  folk  forget 
that  while  a  cat  will  lap  her  milk  content- 
edly from  a  saucer  made  of  Wedgwood  or 
china,   porcelain   or   earthenv/are,   and  will 


74       CHRISTIANITY  AND  PROGRESS 

feel  no  curiosity  about  the  nature  of  the 
receptacle  from  which  she  drinks,  human 
beings  are  not  animals  who  thus  can  take 
their  food  and  ask  no  questions  about  the 
universe  in  which  it  is  served  to  them.  We 
want  to  know  about  life's  origin  and  mean- 
ing and  destiny.  We  cannot  keep  our  ques- 
tions at  home.  AVe  cannot  stop  thinking. 
If  this  universe  is  fundamentally  physical,  if 
the  only  spark  of  spiritual  life  which  it  ever 
knew  is  the  fitful  flame  of  our  own  unsteady 
souls,  if  it  came  from  dust  and  to  dust  will 
return,  leaving  behind  no  recollection  of  the 
human  labour,  sacrifice  and  aspiration  which 
for  a  little  time  it  unconsciously  enshrined, 
that  outlook  makes  an  incalculable  diiTer- 
ence  to  our  present  lives.  For  then  our 
very  minds  themselves,  which  have  devel- 
oped here  by  accident  upon  this  wandering 
island  in  the  skies,  represent  the  only  kind 
of  mind  there  is,  and  what  we  do  not  know 
never  was  thought  about  or  cared  for  or 
purposed  by  anyone,  and  we,  alone  in  know- 
ing, are  ourselves  unknown. 

The  consequence  of  this  sort  of  thinking, 
which  is  the  essence  of  irreligion,  is  to  be 
seen  on  every  side  of  us  in  folk  who,  having 
thus  lost  all  confidence  In  God  and  the  real- 
ity of  the  spiritual  world,  still  try  to  labour 


THE  NEED  FOR  RELIGION  75 

for  the  good  of  men.  They  have  kept  one 
part  of  Christianity,  its  ideals  of  character 
and  service;  they  have  lost  the  other  part, 
which  assures  them  about  God.  In  a  v^ord, 
they  are  trying  to  build  an  idealistic  and 
serviceable  life  upon  a  godless  basis.  Now, 
the  difficulty  with  this  attitude  toward  life 
lies  here:  it  demands  a  quality  of  spirit  for 
which  it  cannot  supply  the  motive.  It  de- 
mands social  hope,  confidence,  enthusiasm 
and  sacrifice,  and  all  the  while  it  cuts  their 
nerves.  It  tells  men  that  the  universe  is 
fundamentally  a  moral  desert,  that  it  never 
was  intended  even  to  have  an  oasis  of  civil- 
ization in  it,  that  if  we  make  one  grow  it 
will  be  by  dint  of  our  own  effort  against  the 
deadset  of  the  universe's  apathy,  that  if,  by 
our  toil,  an  oasis  is  achieved,  it  will  have 
precarious  tenure  in  such  alien  and  inhospi- 
table soil,  and  that  in  the  end  it  will  disap- 
pear before  the  onslaught  of  the  cosmic 
forces:  yet  in  the  same  breath  it  tells  men 
to  work  for  that  oasis  with  hope,  confidence, 
joy  and  enthusiastic  sacrifice.  This  is  a 
world  view  which  asks  of  men  a  valorous 
and  expensive  service  for  which  it  cannot 
supply  the  driving  power.  Yet  many  of  our 
universities  are  presenting  just  that  outlook 
upon  life  to  our  young  men  and  women. 


76       CHRISTIANITY  AND  PROGRESS 

The  youth  are  being  urged  to  fight  coura- 
geously and  sacrificially  for  righteousness 
upon  the  earth,  and  at  the  same  time  they 
are  presented  with  a  view  of  the  back- 
ground and  destiny  of  human  life  similar 
to  that  which  Schopenhauer  expressed: 
"Truly  optimism  cuts  so  sorry  a  figure  in 
this  theatre  of  sin,  suffering,  and  death  that 
we  should  have  to  regard  it  as  a  piece  of 
sarcasm,  if  Hume  had  not  explained  its 
origin — insincere  flattery  of  God  in  the  arro- 
gant expectation  of  gain."  ^ 

What  this  generation,  which  so  dispar- 
ages religion  and  like  the  ancient  Sadducee 
calls  its  good  right  arm  its  god,  will  ulti- 
mately discover  is  that  the  fight  for  right- 
eousness in  character  and  in  society  is  a 
long  and  arduous  campaign.  The  Bible  says 
that  a  thousand  years  in  God's  sight  are 
but  as  yesterday  when  it  is  past,  and  as  a 
watch  in  the  night.  It  certainly  seems  that 
way.  It  is  a  long  and  roundabout  journey 
to  the  Promised  Land.  Generations  die  and 
fall  by  the  way.  The  road  is  white  v/ith  the 
bones  of  pilgrims  who  attained  not  the 
promises  but  saw  them  and  greeted  them 


^Arthur  Schopenhauer:  Die  Welt  als  Wille  und 
Vorstellung,  Zvveiter  Band,  Kapital  46,  Von  der 
Nichtigkeit  und  dem  Leiden  des  Lebens,  p.  669. 


THE  NEED  FOR  RELIGION  77 

from  afar.  Some  Giordano  Bruno,  who 
gives  himself  to  the  achievement  of  man- 
kind's high  aims,  is  burned  at  the  stake; 
centuries  pass  and  on  the  very  spot  where 
he  was  martyred  a  monument  is  built  with 
this  inscription  on  it :  "  Raised  to  Giordano 
Bruno  by  the  generation  which  he  fore- 
saw/' This  is  exhilarating  when  the  story 
is  finished,  but  in  the  meantime  it  is  hard 
work  being  Giordano  Bruno  and  sacrifi- 
cially  labouring  for  a  cause  which  you  care 
enough  for  and  believe  enough  in  and  are 
sure  enough  about  so  that  you  will  die  for  it. 
When  such  faith  and  hope  and  sacrifice  are 
demanded  one  cannot  get  them  by  exhorta- 
tion, by  waving  a  wand  of  words  to  conjure 
his  enthusiasm  up.  Nothing  will  do  but  a 
world-view  adequate  to  supply  motives  for 
the  service  it  demands.  Nothing  will  do  but 
religion. 

One  wonders  w^hy  the  preachers  do  not 
feel  this  more  and  so  recover  their  con- 
sciousness of  an  indispensable  mission. 
One  wonders  that  the  churches  can  be  so 
timid  and  dull  and  negative,  that  our  ser- 
mons can  be  so  pallid  and  inconsequential. 
One  wonders  why  in  the  pulpit  we  have  so 
many  flutes  and  so  few  trumpets.  For  here 
is  a  world  with  the  accumulating  energies  of 


78       CHRISTIANITY  AND  PROGRESS 

the  new  science  in  its  hands,  living  in  the 
purheus  of  hell  because  it  cannot  gain  spir- 
itual mastery  over  the  very  power  in  which 
it  glories.  Here  is  a  world  which  must  build 
its  civilization  on  spiritual  bases  or  else  col- 
lapse into  abysmal  ruin  and  which  cannot 
achieve  the  task  though  all  the  motives  of 
self-preservation  cry  out  to  have  it  done, 
because  men  lack  the  very  elements  of  faith 
and  character  which  it  is  the  business  of 
religion  to  stipply. 

VI 

We  have  said  that  when  science  has  given 
us  all  its  facts  we  still  need  a  spiritual  in- 
terpretation of  the  facts;  that  when  science 
has  put  all  its  energies  Into  our  hands  we 
still  need  spiritual  mastery  over  their  use. 
Let  us  say  in  conclusion  that,  when  science 
has  given  us  all  its  power,  we  still  need  an- 
other kind  of  power  which  it  is  not  the  busi- 
ness of  science  to  supply.  Long  ago  some- 
body who  knew  the  inner  meaning  of  relig- 
ion wrote: 

"  The  Lord  is  my  shepherd ;  I  shall  not  want. 
He  maketh  me  to  lie  down  in  green  pas- 
tures ; 
He  leadeth  me  beside  still  waters. 
He  restoreth  my  soul." 


THE  NEED  FOR  RELIGION  79 

That  last  phrase  sums  up  one  of  the  deepest 
needs  of  human  hfe.  We  are  in  constant 
want  of  spiritual  repair:  we  are  lost  without 
a  fresh  influx  of  inward  power;  we  desper- 
ately need  to  have  our  souls  restored.  A 
young-  British  soldier  once  came  in  from  the 
trenches  where  his  aggressive  powers  had 
been  in  full  employ  and,  having  heard  one 
of  the  finest  concert  companies  that  London 
could  send  out,  he  wrote  in  a  letter  to  his 
family:  ''I  have  just  come  down  from  the 
trenches,  and  have  been  listening  to  one  of 
the  best  concerts  I  ever  attended.  It  makes 
one  feel  that  perhaps  there  is  a  good  God 
after  all."  The  two  aspects  of  life  which 
that  soldier  discovered  in  himself  all  men 
possess.  One  takes  us  to  life's  trenches ;  the 
other  throws  us  back  on  some  revelation  of 
grace  and  beauty  that  we  may  be  sure  of 
God.  With  one  we  seek  aggressively  to 
master  life;  with  the  other  we  seek  recep- 
tively to  be  inspired.  Every  normal  man 
needs  these  two  kinds  of  influence:  one  to 
send  him  informed  and  alert  to  his  tasks,  the 
other  to  float  his  soul  off  its  sandbars  on 
the  rising  tide  of  spiritual  reassurance  and 
power.  Every  normal  man  needs  two  atti- 
tudes: one  when  he  goes  into  action  deter- 
mined to  do  his  work  and  to  do  it  well,  and 


80      CHRISTIANITY  AND  PROGRESS 

the  other  when  he  subdues  his  spirit  to  re- 
ceptivity and  with  the  Psahnist  cries, 

"  My  soul,  wait  thou  in  silence  for  God  only; 
For  my  expectation  is  from  him." 

When  science  has  given  us  all  the  power  it 
can,  we  still  need  another  kind  of  power 
which  science  cannot  give. 

Whatever  else  the  scientific  control  of 
life  may  have  accomplished,  it  has  not  saved 
mankind  from  the  old  and  devastating  prob- 
lems of  trouble  and  sin.  So  far  as  individ- 
ual experience  of  these  is  concerned,  there 
is  little  discernable  difference  between  tv^o 
thousand  years  before  Christ  and  two  thou- 
sand years  afterward.  Still  disasters  fall 
upon  our  lives,  sometimes  as  swift  in  their 
assault  as  wild  beasts  leaping  from  an  un- 
suspected ambush.  Still  troubles  come,  long 
drawn  out  and  wearying,  like  the  monoto- 
nous dripping  of  water  with  which  old  tor- 
turers used  to  drive  their  victims  mad.  Still 
sins  bring  shame  to  the  conscience  and 
tragic  consequence  to  the  life,  and  tiresome 
work,  losing  the  buoyancy  of  its  first  inspi- 
ration, drags  itself  out  into  purposeless 
effort  and  bores  us  with  its  futility.  Folk 
now,  as  much  as  ever  in  all  history,  need  to 
have   their   souls   restored.      The    scientific 


THE  NEED  FOR  RELIGION  81 

control  of  life,  however,  is  not  adequate  for 
that.  Electricity  and  subways  and  motor 
cars  do  not  restore  the  soul;  and  to  know 
that  there  are  millions  upon  millions  of  solar 
systems,  like  our  own,  scattered  through 
space  does  not  restore  the  soul;  and  to  delve 
in  the  sea  or  to  fly  in  the  air  or  to  fling  our 
words  through  the  ether  does  not  restore 
the  soul.  The  need  of  religion  is  perennial 
and  would  be  though  our  scientific  control 
over  life  were  extended  infinitely  beyond 
our  present  hope,  for  the  innermost  ministry 
of  religion  to  human  life  is  the  restoration 
of  the  soul. 

In  this  fact  lies  the  failure  of  that  type  of 
naturalism  which  endeavours  to  keep  relig- 
ion as  a  subjective  experience  and  denies 
the  reality  of  an  objective  God.  If  we  are 
not  already  familiar  with  this  attempted  sub- 
stitution we  soon  shall  be,  for  our  young 
people  are  being  taught  it  in  many  a  class- 
room now.  One  of  the  basic  principles  of 
this  new  teaching  is  belief  in  the  spiritual 
life  but,  when  one  inquires  where  the  spir- 
itual life  is,  he  discovers  that  it  is  altogether 
within  ourselves — there  is  no  original,  cre- 
ative and  abiding  Spiritual  Life  from  whom 
we  come,  by  whom  we  are  sustained,  in 
whom  we  live.    Rather,  as  flowers  reveal  in 


82       CHRISTIANITY  AND  PROGRESS 

their  fragrance  a  beauty  which  is  not  in  the 
earth  where  they  grow  nor  in  the  roots  on 
which  they  depend,  so  our  spiritual  life  is 
the  mysterious  refinement  of  the  material 
out  of  which  we  are  constructed,  and  it  has 
nothing  to  correspond  with  it  in  the  source 
from  which  we  sprang.  Nevertheless,  the 
new  naturalism  exalts  this  spiritual  life 
within  us,  calls  it  our  crown  and  glory,  bids 
us  cultivate  and  diffuse  it,  says  about  it 
nearly  everything  a  Christian  says  except 
that  it  is  a  revelation  of  eternal  reality. 
Moreover,  it  is  difficult  to  differentiate  from 
this  outspoken  group  of  professed  natural- 
ists another  group  of  humanists  who  do  re- 
tain the  idea  of  God.  but  merely  as  the  sum 
total  of  man's  idealistic  life.  "  God,"  says 
one  exponent,  "  is  the  farthest  outreach  of 
our  human  ideals."  That  is  to  say,  our 
spiritual  lives  created  God,  not  God  our 
spiritual  lives.  God,  as  one  enthusiastic 
devotee  of  this  new  cult  has  put  it,  is  a  sort 
of  Uncle  Sam,  the  pooling  of  the  idealistic 
imaginations  of  multitudes.  Of  course  he 
does  not  exist,  yet  in  a  sense  he  is  real;  he 
is  the  projection  of  our  loyalties,  affections, 
hopes. 

It  should  go  without  saying  that  this  idea 
of  God  has  about  as  much  intellectual  Talid- 


THE  NEED  FOR  RELIGION  83 

ity  as  belief  in  Santa  Claus  and  is  even  more 
sentimental,  in  that  it  is  a  deliberate  attempt 
to  disguise  in  pleasant  and  familiar  terms  a 
fundamentally  materialistic  interpretation  of 
reality.  The  vital  failure  of  this  spiritual- 
ized naturalism,  however,  lies  in  the  inabil- 
ity of  its  Uncle  Sam  to  meet  the  deepest 
needs  on  account  of  which  men  at  their  best 
have  been  religious.  This  deified  projec- 
tion of  our  ideals  we  made  up  ourselves  and 
so  we  cannot  really  pray  to  him;  he  does 
not  objectively  exist  and  so  has  no  unifying 
meaning  which  puts  purposefulness  into  cre- 
ation and  hope  ahead  of  it;  he  does  not  care 
for  any  one  or  anything  and  so  we  may  not 
trust  him ;  and  neither  in  sin  can  he  forgive, 
cleanse,  restore,  empower,  nor  in  sorrow 
comfort  and  sustain.  A  god  who  functions 
so  poorly  is  not  much  of  a  god.  Once  more, 
therefore,  one  wonders  why  in  a  generation 
when,  not  less,  but  more,  because  of  all  our 
scientific  mastery  the  souls  of  men  are 
starved  and  tired,  the  Church  is  not 
captured  by  a  new  sense  of  mission.  It  is 
precisely  in  a  day  when  the  active  and  pug- 
nacious energies  of  men  are  most  involved 
in  the  conquest  of  the  world  that  the  spirit 
becomes  most  worn  for  lack  of  sustenance. 
To  be  assured  of  the  nearness  and  reality 


84       CHRISTIANITY  AND  PROGRESS 

and  availability  of  the  spiritual  world  is  a 
matter  of  life  and  death  to  multitudes  of 
folk  to-day.  There  could  hardly  be  a  more 
alluring  time  in  which  to  make  the  Holy 
Spirit  real  to  the  world.  For  the  supreme 
moral  asset  in  any  man's  life  is  not  his  ag- 
gressiveness nor  his  pugnacity,  but  his  ca- 
pacity to  be  inspired — to  be  inspired  by 
great  books,  great  music,  by  love  and  friend- 
ship; to  be  inspired  by  great  faiths,  great 
hopes,  great  ideals;  to  be  inspired  su- 
premely by  the  Spirit  of  God.  For  so  we 
are  lifted  until  the  things  we  tried  to  see 
and  could  not  we  now^  can  see  because  of 
the  altitude  at  which  we  stand,  and  the 
things  we  tried  to  do  and  could  not  we  now 
can  do  because  of  the  fellowship  in  which 
we  live.  To  one  asserting  the  adequacy  of 
the  scientific  control  of  life,  therefore,  the 
Christian's  third  answer  is  clear:  man's 
deepest  need  is  spiritual  power,  and  spiri- 
tual power  comes  out  of  the  soul's  deep  fel- 
lowships with  the  living  God. 

Such,  then,  is  the  abiding  need  of  religion 
in  a  scientific  age.  To  be  scientifically 
minded  is  one  of  the  supreme  achievements 
of  mankind.  To  love  truth,  as  science  loves 
it,  to  seek  truth  tirelessly,  as  science  seeks 
it,  to  reveal  the  latent  resources  of  the  uni- 


THE  NEED  FOR  RELIGION  85 

verse  in  hope  that  men  will  use  them  for 
good  and  not  for  evil,  as  science  does,  is 
one  of  the  chief  glories  of  our  race.  When, 
however,  w^e  have  taken  everything  that 
science  gives,  it  is  not  enough  for  life. 
When  we  have  facts,  we  still  need  a  spiritual 
interpretation  of  facts;  when  we  have  all  the 
scientific  forces  that  we  can  get  our  hands 
upon,  we  still  need  spiritual  mastery  over 
their  use;  and,  beyond  all  the  power  that 
science  gives,  we  need  that  inward  power 
which  comes  from  spiritual  fellowships 
alone.  Religion  is  indispensable.  To  build 
human  life  upon  another  basis  is  to  erect 
civilization  upon  sand,  where  the  rain  de- 
scends and  the  floods  come  and  the  winds 
blow  and  beat  upon  the  house  and  it  falls 
and  great  is  the  fall  thereof. 


LECTURE  III 

THE  GOSPEL  AND  SOCIAL 
PROGRESS 

I 

OUR  last  lecture  started  with  the  propo- 
sition that  the  dominant  influence  in 
the  intellectual  and  practical  activity 
of  the  modern  age  is  man's  scientific  mas- 
tery over  life.  This  present  lecture  consid- 
ers one  of  the  consequences  of  this  primary 
fact:  namely,  the  humanitarian  desire  to 
take  advantage  of  this  scientific  control  of 
life  so  to  change  social  conditions  that  man- 
kind may  be  relieved  from  crushing  handi- 
caps which  now  oppress  it.  For  the  growth 
of  scientific  knowledge  and  control  has  been 
coincident  with  a  growth  of  humanitarian 
sentiment.  This  movement  for  human  re- 
lief and  social  reform,  in  the  midst  of  which' 
we  live,  is  one  of  the  chief  influences  of  our 
time.  It  has  claimed  the  allegiance  of  many 
of  the  noblest  folk  among  us.  Its  idealism, 
its  call  to  sacrifice,  the  concreteness  of  the 
tasks  which  it  undertakes  and  of  the  gains 

87 


88       CHRISTIANITY  AND  PROGRESS 

which  it  achieves,  have  attracted  ahke  the 
fine  spirits  and  the  practical  abilities  of  our 
generation.  What  attitude  shall  the  Chris- 
tian Church  take  tov^ard  this  challenging  en- 
deavour to  save  society?  How  shall  she  re- 
gard this  passionate  belief  in  the  possibility 
of  social  betterment  and  this  enthusiastic 
determination  to  achieve  it?  The  question 
is  one  of  crucial  importance  and  the  Church 
is  far  from  united  on  its  answer.  Some 
Christians  claim  the  whole  movement  as  the 
child  of  the  Church,  born  of  her  spirit  and 
expressing  her  central  purpose;  others  dis- 
claim the  whole  movement  as  evil  and  teach 
that  the  world  must  grow  increasingly 
worse  until  some  divine  cataclysm  shall 
bring  its  hopeless  corruption  to  an  end; 
others  treat  the  movement  as  useful  but  of 
minor  import,  while  they  try  to  save  men  by 
belief  in  dogmatic  creeds  or  by  carefully 
engineered  emotional  experiences.  Mean- 
while, no  words  can  exaggerate  the  fidelity, 
the  vigour,  the  hopefulness,  and  the  ele- 
vated spirit  with  which  many  of  our  best 
young  men  and  women  throw  themselves 
into  this  campaign  for  better  conditions  of 
living.  Surely,  the  intelligent  portion  of  the 
Church  would  better  think  as  clearly  as  pos- 
sible about  a  matter  of  such  crucial  import. 


GOSPEL  AND  SOCIAL  PROGRESS      89 

At  first  sight,  the  devotee  of  social  Chris- 
tianity is  inclined  impatiently  to  brush  aside 
as  mere  ignorant  bigotry  on  the  Church's 
part  ail  cautious  suspicion  of  the  social 
movement.  But  there  is  one  real  difficulty 
which  the  thoughtful  Christian  must  per- 
ceive w^hen  he  compares  the  characteristic 
approach  to  the  human  problem  made  by 
the  social  campaign,  on  the  one  side,  and 
by  religion,  on  the  other.  Much  of  the  mod- 
ern social  movement  seems  to  proceed  upon 
the  supposition  that  we  can  save  mankind 
by  the  manipulation  of  outward  circum- 
stance. There  are  societies  to  change  every- 
thing that  can  be  changed  and,  because  the 
most  obvious  and  easy  subjects  of  trans- 
formation are  the  external  arrangements  of 
human  life,  men  set  themselves  first  and 
chiefly  to  change  those.  We  are  always 
trying  to  improve  the  play  by  shifting  the 
scenery.  But  no  person  of  insight  ever  be- 
lieved that  the  manipulation  of  circumstance 
alone  can  solve  man's  problems.  Said  Emer- 
son, "  No  change  of  circumstances  can  re- 
pair a  defect  of  character."  Said  Herbert 
Spencer,  "  No  philosopher's  stone  of  a  con- 
stitution can  produce  golden  conduct  from 
leaden  instincts."  Said  James  Anthony 
Froude,    "  Human    improvement    is    from 


90       CHRISTIANITY  AND  PROGRESS 

Avithin  outwards."  Said  Carlyle,  "Fool! 
the  Ideal  is  in  thyself,  the  impediment  too  is 
in  thyself:  thy  Condition  is  but  the  stuff 
thou  art  to  shape  that  same  Ideal  out  of." 
Said  Mrs.  Browning: 

"  It  takes  a  soul, 
To  move  a  body :  it  takes  a  high-souled  man 
To  move  the  masses  even  to  a  cleaner  stye : 

Ah,  your  Fouriers  failed, 

Because  not  poets  enough  to  understand 
That  Hfe  develops  from  w^ithin." 

Now,  religion's  characteristic  approach  to 
the  human  problem  is  represented  by  this 
conviction  that  "  life  develops  from  within." 
So  far  from  expecting  to  save  mankind  by 
the  manipulation  of  outward  circumstance, 
it  habitually  has  treated  outward  circum- 
stance as  of  inferior  moment  in  comparison 
with  the  inner  attitudes  and  resources  of 
the  spirit.  Economic  affluence,  for  exam- 
ple, has  not  seemed  to  Christianity  in  any 
of  its  historic  forms  indispensable  to  man's 
well-being;  rather,  economic  af^uence  has 
been  regarded  as  a  danger  to  be  escaped  or 
else  to  be  resolutely  handled  as  one  would 
handle  fire — useful  if  well  managed  but  des- 
perately perilous  if  uncontrolled.  Nor  can 
it  be  said  that  Christianity  has  consistently 
maintained  this  attitude  without  having  in 


GOSPEL  AND  SOCIAL  PROGRESS      91 

actual  experience  much  ground  for  holding 
it.  The  possession  of  economic  comfort  has 
never  yet  guaranteed  a  decent  life,  much  less 
a  spiritually  satisfactory  one.  The  morals 
of  Fifth  Avenue  are  not  such  that  it  can 
look  down  on  Third  Avenue,  nor  is  it  pos- 
sible anywhere  to  discern  gradation  of  char- 
acter on  the  basis  of  relative  economic 
standing.  It  is  undoubtedly  true  that  folks 
and  families  often  have  their  moral  stamina 
weakened  and  their  personalities  debauched 
by  sinking  into  discouraging  poverty,  but  it 
is  an  open  question  whether  more  folks  and 
families  have  not  lost  their  souls  by  rising 
into  wealth.  Still,  after  all  these  centuries, 
the  ''  rich  fool,"  with  his  overflowing  barns 
and  his  soul  that  sought  to  feed  itself  on 
corn,  is  a  familiar  figure;  still  it  is  as  easy 
for  a  camel  to  go  through  a  needle's  eye  as 
for  a  rich  man  to  enter  the  Kingdom  of 
Heaven.  When,  therefore,  the  Christian, 
approaching  the  human  problem,  not  from 
without  in,  but  from  within  out,  runs  upon 
this  modern  social  movement  endeavour- 
ing to  save  mankind  by  the  manipulation 
of  outward  circumstance,  his  cautious  and 
qualified  consent  may  be  neither  so  igno- 
rant nor  so  unreasonable  as  it  at  first 
appears. 


92       CHRISTIANITY  AND  PROGRESS 

As  an  example  of  manipulated  circum- 
stance in  which  we  are  asked  to  trust,  con- 
sider the  new  international  arjangements 
upon  which  the  world  leans  so  heavily  for 
its  hopes  of  peace.  Surely,  he  would  be  a 
poor  Christian  who  did  not  rejoice  in  every 
reasonable  expectation  w^hich  new  forms  of 
co-operative  organization  can  fulfil.  But  he 
would  be  a  thoughtless  Christian,  too,  if  he 
did  not  see  that  all  good  forms  of  interna- 
tional organization  are  trellises  to  give  the 
vines  of  human  relationship  a  fairer  chance 
to  grow;  but  if  the  vines  themselves  main- 
tain their  old  acid  quality,  bringing  out  of 
their  own  inward  nature  from  roots  of  bit- 
terness grapes  that  set  the  people's  teeth 
on  edge,  then  no  external  trellises  will  solve 
the  problem.  It  is  this  Christian  approach 
to  life,  from  within  out,  which  causes  the 
common  misunderstanding  between  the 
social  movement  and  the  Church.  The  first 
thinks  mainly  of  the  importance  of  the 
trellis;  the  second  thinks  chiefly  about  the 
quality  of  the  vine. 

The  more  deep  and  transforming  a  man's 
own  religious  experience  has  been,  the  more 
he  will  insist  upon  the  importance  of  this  in- 
ward approach.  Here  is  a  man  who  has  had 
a  profound  evangelical  experience.     He  has 


GOSPEL  AND  SOCIAL  PROGRESS      93 

gone  down  into  the  valley  of  the  shadow 
with  a  deep  sense  of  spiritual  need;  he  has 
found  in  Christ  a  Saviour  who  has  lifted  him 
up  into  spiritual  freedom  and  victory;  he 
has  gone  out  to  live  with  a  sense  of  unpay- 
able indebtedness  to  him.  He  has  had,  in  a 
word,  a  typical  religious  experience  at  its 
best  with  three  elements  at  the  heart  of  it: 
a  great  need,  a  great  salvation,  a  great  grati- 
tude. When  such  a  man  considers  the  mod- 
ern social  movement,  however  beautiful  its 
spirit  or  admirable  its  concrete  gains,  it 
seems  to  him  superficial  if  it  presents  itself 
as  a  panacea.  It  does  not  go  deep  enough 
to  reach  the  soul's  real  problems.  The 
continual  misunderstanding  between  the 
Church  and  the  social  movement  has,  then, 
this  explanation:  the  characteristic  ap- 
proach of  the  Christian  Gospel  to  the  human 
problem  is  from  within  out;  the  character- 
istic approach  of  much  of  the  modern  social 
movement  is  from  without  in. 

II 

If,  therefore,  the  Christian  Gospel  is  go- 
ing to  be  true  to  itself,  it  must  carefully 
preserve  amid  the  pressure  of  our  modern 
social  enthusiasms  certain  fundamental  em- 
phases which  are  characteristic  of  its  genius. 


94       CHRISTIANITY  AND  PROGRESS 

It  must  stress  the  possibility  and  the  neces- 
sity of  the  inward  transformation  of  the 
lives  of  men.  We  know  now  that  a  thorny 
cactus  does  not  have  to  stay  a  thorny 
cactus ;  Burbank  can  change  it.  We  know 
that  a  crab-apple  tree  does  not  have  to  stay 
a  crab-apple  tree;  it  can  be  grafted  and 
become  an  astrakhan.  We  know  that  a 
malarial  swamp  does  not  have  to  stay  a  ma- 
larial swamp ;  it  can  be  drained  and  become 
a  health  resort.  We  know  that  a  desert 
does  not  have  to  stay  a  desert;  it  can  be 
irrigated  and  become  a  garden.  But  while 
all  these  possibilities  of  transformation  are 
opening  up  in  the  world  outside  of  us,  the 
most  important  in  the  series  concerns  the 
world  within  us.  The  primary  question  is 
whether  human  nature  is  thus  transform- 
able, so  that  men  can  be  turned  about,  hat- 
ing what  formerly  they  loved  and  loving 
what  once  they  hated.  Said  Tolstoy,  whose 
early  life  had  been  confessedly  vile:  "  Five 
years  ago  faith  came  to  me;  I  believed  in 
the  doctrine  of  Jesus,  and  my  whole  life 
underwent  a  sudden  transformation.  What 
I  had  once  wished  for  I  wished  for  no 
longer,  and  I  began  to  desire  what  I  had 
never  desired  before.  What  had  once  ap- 
peared  to    me    right   now   became   wrong, 


GOSPEL  AND  SOCIAL  PROGRESS      95 

and    the    wrong   of   the    past    I    beheld    as 
right."  ^ 

So  indispensable  to  the  welfare  of  the 
world  is  this  experience,  that  we  Christians 
need  to  break  loose  from  our  too  narrow 
conceptions  of  it  and  to  set  it  in  a  large 
horizon.  We  have  been  too  often  tempted 
to  make  of  conversion  a  routine  emotional 
experience.  Even  Jonathan  Edwards  was 
worried  about  himself  in  this  regard.  He 
wrote  once  in  his  diary:  "The  chief  thing 
that  now  makes  me  in  any  measure  question 
my  good  estate  is  my  not  having  experi- 
enced conversion  in  those  particular  steps 
wherein  the  people  of  New  England,  and 
anciently  the  dissenters  of  old  England, 
used  to  experience  it."  Poor  Jonathan! 
How  many  have  been  so  distraught!  But 
the  supreme  folly  of  any  man's  spiritual  life 
is  to  try  thus  to  run  himself  into  the  mold  of 
any  other  man's  experience.  There  is  no 
regular  routine  in  spiritual  transformation. 
Some  men  come  in  on  a  high  tide  of  feeling, 
like  Billy  Bray,  the  drunken  miner,  who,  re- 
leased from  his  debasing  slavery  and  reborn 
into  a  vigorous  life,  cried,  "  If  they  were  to 
put  me  into  a  barrel  I  would  shout  glory 
out    through    the    bunghole!      Praise    the 


^Leo  M.  Tolstoi :    My  Religion,  Introduction,  p.  ix. 


96       CHRISTIANITY  AND  PROGRESS 

Ivord!"  Some  men  come  in  like  Bushnell, 
the  New  England  scholar  and  preacher, 
who,  when  he  was  an  unbelieving  tutor  at 
Yale,  fell  on  his  knees  in  the  quiet  of  his 
study  and  said,  "  O  God,  I  believe  there  is 
an  eternal  difference  between  right  and 
wrong  and  I  hereby  give  myself  up  to  do  the 
right  and  to  refrain  from  the  wrong."  Some 
men  break  up  into  the  new  life  suddenly  like 
the  Oxford  graduate  who,  having  lived  a  dis- 
solute life  until  six  years  after  his  graduation 
from  the  university  in  1880,  picked  up  in  his 
room  one  day  Drummond's  "  Natural  Law 
in  the  Spiritual  World,"  and,  lo!  the  light 
broke  suddenly — "  I  rejoiced  there  and  then 
in  a  conversion  so  astounding  that  the  whole 
village  heard  of  it  in  less  than  twenty-four 
hours."  Some  come  slowly,  like  old  John 
Livingstone,  who  said,  "  I  do  not  remember 
any  particular  time  of  conversion,  or  that  I 
was  much  cast  down  or  lift  up."  Spiritual 
transformation  is  infinitely  various  because 
it  is  so  infinitely  vital;  but  behind  all  the 
special  forms  of  experience  stands  the  colos- 
sal fact  that  men  can  be  transformed  by  the 
Spirit  of  God. 

That  this  experience  of  inward  enlight- 
enment and  transformation  should  ever  be 
neglected    or    minimized    or    forgotten    or 


GOSPEL  AND  SOCIAL  PROGRESS      97 

crowded  out  is  the  more  strange  because 
one  keeps  running  on  it  outside  religion  as 
well  as  within.  John  Keats,  when  eighteen 
years  old,  was  handed  one  day  a  copy  of 
Spenser's  poems.  He  never  had  known  be- 
fore what  his  life  was  meant  to  be.  He 
found  out  that  day.  Like  a  voice  from 
heaven  his  call  came  in  the  stately  measures 
of  Spenser's  glorious  verse.  He  knew  that 
he  was  meant  to  be  a  poet.  Upon  this  mas- 
ter fact  that  men  can  be  inwardly  trans- 
formed Christ  laid  his  hand  and  put  it  at 
the  very  center  of  his  gospel.  All  through 
the  New  Testament  there  is  a  throb  of  joy 
which,  traced  back,  brings  one  to  the  assur- 
ance that  no  man  need  stay  the  way  he  is. 
Among  the  gladdest,  solemnest  words  in  the 
records  of  our  race  are  such  passages  in  the 
New  Testament  as  this:  Fornicators,  adul- 
terers, thieves,  covetous,  drunkards,  revel- 
ers, extortioners,  such  were  some  of  you ; 
but  ye  were  washed,  but  ye  were  sanctified, 
but  ye  were  justified  in  the  name  of  the 
Lord  Jesus  Christ  and  in  the  Spirit  of  our 
God.  One  cannot  find  in  the  New  Testa- 
ment anything  stiff  and  stilted  about  this 
experience.  Paul's  change  came  suddenly; 
Peter's  came  slowly.  They  did  not  even 
have,  as  we  have  come  to  have,  a  settled 


98       CHRISTIANITY  AND  PROGRESS 

word  to  describe  the  experience.  Ask 
James  what  it  is  and,  practical-minded  man 
that  he  is,  he  calls  it  conversion — being 
turned  around.  Ask  Peter  what  it  is  and,  as 
he  looks  back  upon  his  old  benighted  con- 
dition, he  cries  that  it  is  like  coming  out  of 
the  darkness  into  a  marvelous  light.  Ask  Paul 
what  it  is  and,  w^ith  his  love  of  superlative 
figures,  he  cries  that  it  is  like  being  dead  and 
being  raised  again  with  a  great  resurrection. 
Ask  John  what  it  is  and,  with  his  mystical 
spirit,  he  says  that  it  is  being  born  again.  See 
the  variety  that  comes  from  vitality — no  stiff 
methods,  no  stiff  routine  of  experience,  but 
throbbing  through  the  whole  book  the  good 
news  of  an  illuminating,  liberating,  trans- 
forming experience  that  can  make  men  new  1 
It  is  the  more  strange  that  this  central 
element  in  the  Christian  Gospel  should  be 
neglected  in  the  interests  of  social  reforma- 
tion because  it  is  so  indispensable  to  social 
reformation.  Wherever  a  new  social  hope 
allures  the  efforts  of  forward-looking  men, 
there  is  one  argument  against  the  hope 
which  always  rises.  You  cannot  do  that — 
men  say — human  nature  is  against  it;  hu- 
man nature  has  always  acted  another  way; 
you  cannot  change  human  nature ;  your 
hope  is  folly.    As  one  listens  to  such  skepti- 


GOSPEL  AND  SOCIAL  PROGRESS      99 

cism  he  sees  that  men  mean  by  human 
nature  a  static,  unalterable  thing,  huge, 
inert,  changeless,  a  dull  mass  that  resists 
all  transformation.  The  very  man  who  says 
that  may  be  an  engineer.  He  may  be  speak- 
ing in  the  next  breath  with  high  enthusiasm 
about  a  desert  in  Arizona  where  they  are 
bringing  down  the  water  from  the  hills  and 
where  in  a  few  years  there  will  be  no  desert, 
but  orange  groves  stretching  as  far  as  the 
eye  can  reach,  and  eucalyptus  trees  making 
long  avenues  of  shade,  and  roses  running 
wild,  as  plenteous  as  goldenrod  in  a  New 
England  field.  But  while  about  physical 
nature  he  is  as  hopeful  of  possible  change  as 
a  prophet,  for  human  nature  he  thinks 
nothing  can  be  done. 

From  the  Christian  point  of  view  this  idea 
of  human  nature  is  utterly  false.  So  far 
from  being  stiff  and  set,  human  nature  is 
the  most  plastic,  the  most  changeable  thing 
with  which  we  deal.  It  can  be  brutalized 
beneath  the  brutes ;  it  can  rise  into  compan- 
ionship with  angels.  Our  primitive  fore- 
fathers, as  our  fairy  tales  still  reveal,  be- 
lieved that  men  and  women  could  be 
changed  into  anything — into  trees,  rocks, 
wolves,  bears,  kings  and  fairy  sprites.  One 
of  the  most  prominent  professors  of  soci- 


100     CHRISTIANITY  AND  PROGRESS 

ology  in  America  recently  said  that  these 
stories  are  a  poetic  portraiture  of  some- 
thing which  eternally  is  true.  Men  can  be 
transformed.  That  is  a  basic  fact,  and  it  is 
one  of  the  central  emphases  of  the  Christian 
Gospel.  Of  all  days  in  which  that  emphasis 
should  be  remembered,  the  chiefest  is  the 
day  when  men  are  thinking  about  social 
reformation. 

Ill 

It  is  only  a  clear  recognition  of  the  crucial 
importance  of  man's  inward  transformation 
which  can  prepare  us  for  a  proper  appreci- 
ation of  the  social  movement's  meaning. 
For  one  point  of  contact  between  religion's 
approach  to  the  human  problem  from  within 
out  and  reformation's  approach  from  with- 
out in  lies  here:  to  change  social  environ- 
ments which  oppress  and  dwarf  and  defile 
the  lives  of  men  is  one  way  of  giving  the 
transforming  Spirit  a  fair  chance  to  reach 
and  redeem  them.  All  too  slowly  does  the 
truth  lay  hold  upon  the  Church  that  our 
very  personalities  themselves  are  social 
products,  that  we  are  born  out  of  society  and 
live  in  it  and  are  molded  by  it,  that  without 
society  we  should  not  be  human  at  all,  and 
that   the    influences   which    play   upon    our 


GOSPEL  AND  SOCIAL  PROGRESS    101 

lives,  whether  redeeming  or  degrading,  are 
socially  mediated.  A  man  who  says  that  he 
believes  in  the  ineffable  value  of  human  per- 
sonalities and  who  professes  to  desire  their 
transformation  and  yet  who  has  no  desire 
to  give  them  better  homes,  better  cities, 
better  family  relationships,  better  health, 
better  economic  resources,  better  recre- 
ations, better  books  and  better  schools,  is 
either  an  ignoramus  who  does  not  see  what 
these  things  mean  in  the  growth  of  souls, 
or  else  an  unconscious  hypocrite  who  does 
not  really  care  so  much  about  the  souls  of 
men  as  he  says  he  does. 

An  illuminating  illustration  of  this  fact  is 
to  be  seen  in  the  expanding  ideals  of  mis- 
sionary work.  When  the  missionaries 
first  went  to  the  ends  of  the  earth  they 
went  to  save  souls  one  by  one.  They 
went  out  generally  with  a  distinctly,  often 
narrowly,  individualistic  motive.  They 
were  trying  to  gather  into  the  ark  a  few 
redeemed  spirits  out  of  the  wreck  of  a  per- 
ishing world;  they  were  not  thinking  pri- 
marily of  building  a  kingdom  of  social  right- 
eousness in  the  earth.  Consider,  then,  the 
fascinating  story  of  the  way  the  mission- 
aries, whatever  may  have  been  the  motives 
with  which  they  started,  have  become  social 


102     CHRISTIANITY  AND  PROGRESS 

reformers.  If  the  missionaries  were  to  take 
the  Gospel  to  the  people,  they  had  to  get  to 
the  people.  So  they  became  the  explorers 
of  the  world.  It  was  the  missionaries  who 
opened  up  Asia  and  Africa.  Was  there  ever 
a  more  stirring  story  of  adventure  than  is 
given  us  in  the  life  of  David  Livingstone? 
Then  when  the  missionaries  had  reached  the 
people  to  give  them  the  Gospel,  they  had  to 
give  them  the  Bible.  So  they  became  the 
philologists  and  translators  of  the  world. 
They  built  the  lexicons  and  grammars. 
They  translated  the  Bible  into  more  than  a 
hundred  languages  on  the  continent  of 
Africa  alone.  Carey  and  his  followers  did 
the  same  for  over  a  score  of  languages  in 
India.  The  Bible  to-day  is  available  in  over 
six  hundred  living  languages.  Everywhere 
this  prodigious  literary  labour  has  been 
breaking  down  the  barriers  of  speech  and 
thought  between  the  peoples.  If  ever  we 
do  get  a  decent  internationalism,  how  much 
of  it  will  rest  back  upon  this  pioneer  spade 
work  of  the  missionaries,  digging  through 
the  barricades  of  language  that  separate  the 
minds  of  men!  When,  then,  the  mission- 
aries had  books  to  give  the  people,  the 
people  had  to  learn  to  read.  So  the  mis- 
sionaries became  educators,  and  wherever 


GOSPEL  AND  SOCIAL  PROGRESS    103 

you   find  the   church  you  find  the   school. 
But  what  is  the  use  of  educating  people  who 
do  not  understand  how  to  be  sanitary,  who 
live  in  filth  and  disease  and  die  needlessly, 
and  how  can  you  take  away  old  supersti- 
tions   and    not    put    new    science    in    their 
places,    or    deprive    the    people    of    witch 
doctors  without  offering  them  substitutes? 
So  the  missionaries  became  physicians,  and 
one  of  the  most  beneficent  enterprises  that 
history  records  is  medical  missions.     What 
is  the  use,  however,  of  helping  people  to  get 
well  when  their  economic  condition  is  such, 
their  standards  of  fife  so  low,  that  they  con- 
tinue to  fall  sick  again  in  spite  of  you?     So 
the  missionaries  are  becoming  industrial  re- 
formers,   agriculturalists,    chemists,    physi- 
cists,  engineers,   rebuilding  wherever  they 
can  the  economic  life  and  comfort  of  their 
people.      The    missionary   cause    itself   has 
been  compelled,  whether  it  would  or  not,  to 
grow   socially-minded.     As   Dan   Crawford 
says  about  the  work  in  Africa:  ''  Here,  then, 
is    Africa's    challenge    to    its    Missionaries. 
Will  they  allow  a  whole  continent  to  live 
like    beasts    in    such    hovels,    millions    of 
negroes   cribbed,   cabined,   and   confined  in 
dens  of  disease?    No  doubt  it  is  our  diurnal 
duty  to  preach  that  the  soul  of  all  improve- 


104    CHRISTIANITY  AND  PROGRESS 

ment  is  the  improvement  of  the  soul.  But 
God's  equilateral  triangle  of  body,  soul,  and 
spirit  must  never  be  ignored.  Is  not  the 
body  wholly  ensouled,  and  is  not  the  soul 
wholly  embodiedf  ...  In  other  words,  in 
Africa  the  only  true  fulfilling  of  your  heav- 
enly calling  is  the  doing  of  earthly  things  in 
a  heavenly  manner."  ^ 

Indeed,  if  any  one  is  tempted  to  espouse  a 
narrowly  individualistic  gospel  of  regener- 
ation, let  him  go  to  the  Far  East  and  take 
note  of  Buddhism.  Buddhism  in  wide  areas 
of  its  life  is  doing  precisely  what  the  indi- 
vidualists recommend.  It  is  a  religion  of 
personal  comfort  and  redemption.  It  is  not 
mastered  by  a  vigorous  hope  of  social  refor- 
mation. In  many  ways  it  is  extraordinarily 
like  medieval  Christianity.  Consider  this 
definition  of  his  religion  that  was  given  by 
one  Buddhist  teacher:  ''Religion,"  he  said, 
"  is  a  device  to  bring  peace  of  mind  in  the 
midst  of  conditions  as  they  are."  Condi- 
tions as  they  are — settle  down  in  them ;  be 
comfortable  about  them;  do  not  try  to 
change  them;  let  no  prayer  for  the  King- 
dom of  God  on  earth  disturb  them ;  and 
there  seek  for  yourselves  "  peace  of  mind 
in   the   midst   of   conditions   as   they   are." 


ID.  Crawford :   Thinking  Black,  pp.  444-445. 


GOSPEL  AND  SOCIAL  PROGRESS    105 

And  the  Buddhist  teacher  added,  "  My  re- 
ligion is  pure  religion."  But  is  there  any 
such  thing  as  really  caring  about  the  souls 
of  men  and  not  caring  about  social  habits, 
moral  conditions,  popular  recreations,  eco- 
nomic handicaps  that  in  every  way  affect 
them?  Of  all  deplorable  and  degenerate 
conceptions  of  religion  can  anything  be 
worse  than  to  think  of  it  as  a  "  device  to 
bring  peace  of  mind  in  the  midst  of  con- 
ditions as  they  are?"  Yet  one  finds  plenty 
of  Church  members  in  America  whose  idea 
of  the  '*  simple  Gospel "  comes  perilously 
near  that  Buddhist's  idea  of  "  pure  religion." 
The  utter  futility  of  endeavouring  to  care 
about  the  inward  transformation  of  men's 
lives  while  not  caring  about  their  social  en- 
vironment is  evident  when  one  thinks  of 
our  international  relationships  and  their 
recurrent  issue  in  war.  War  surely  cannot 
be  thought  of  any  longer  as  a  school  for 
virtue.  We  used  to  think  it  was.  We  half 
believed  the  German  war  party  when  they 
told  us  about  the  disciplinary  value  of  their 
gigantic  establishment,  and  when  Lord  Rob- 
erts assured  us  that  war  was  tonic  for  the 
souls  of  peoples  we  were  inclined  to  think 
that  he  was  right.  When,  in  answer  to  our 
nation's  call,  our  men  went  out  to  fight  and 


106     CHRISTIANITY  AND  PROGRESS 

all  our  people  were  bound  up  in  a  fellowship 
of  devotion  to  a  common  cause,  so  stimu- 
lated were  we  that  we  almost  were  con- 
vinced that  out  of  such  an  experience  there 
might  come  a  renaissance  of  spiritual  qual- 
ity and  life.  Is  there  anybody  who  can 
blind  his  eyes  to  the  facts  now?  Every 
competent  witness  in  Europe  and  America 
has  had  to  say  that  we  are  on  a  far  lower 
moral  level  than  we  were  before  the  war. 
Crimes  of  sex,  crimes  of  violence,  have  been 
imprecedented.  Large  areas  of  Europe  are 
to-day  in  a  chaos  so  complete  that  not  one 
man  in  a  thousand  in  America  even  dimly 
imagines  it,  with  a  break-down  of  all  the 
normal,  sustaining  relationships  and  privi- 
leges of  civilized  life,  and  with  an  accom- 
panying collapse  of  character  unprecedented 
in  Christendom  since  the  days  of  the  Black 
Plague.  If  we  are  wise  we  will  never  again 
go  down  into  hell  expecting  to  come  up  with 
spirits  redeemed. 

To  be  sure,  there  are  many  individuals  of 
such  moral  stamina  that  they  have  come  out 
of  this  experience  personally  the  better,  not 
the  worse.  There  are  people  who  would 
build  into  the  fiber  of  their  character  any 
experience  that  earth  could  offer  them.  But 
if  we  are  thinking  of  the  moral  stability  and 


GOSPEL  AND  SOCIAL  PROGRESS    107 

progress  of  mankind,  surely  there  is  nothing" 
in  the  processes  of  war,  as  we  have  seen 
them,  or  the  results  of  war,  as  they  now  lie 
about  us,  that  would  lead  us  to  trust  to  them 
for  help.  War  takes  a  splendid  youth 
willing  to  serve  the  will  of  God  in  his  gen- 
eration before  he  falls  on  sleep  and  teaches 
him  the  skilful  trick  of  twisting  a  bayonet 
into  the  abdomen  of  an  enemy.  War  takes 
a  loyal-spirited  man  w^ho  is  not  afraid  of 
anything  under  heaven  and  teaches  him  to 
drop  bombs  on  undefended  towns,  to  kill 
perchance  the  baby  suckled  at  her  mother's 
breast.  The  father  of  one  of  our  young 
men,  back  from  France,  finding  that  his  son, 
like  many  others,  would  not  talk,  rebuked 
him  for  his  silence.  "  Just  one  thing  I  will 
tell  you,"  the  son  answered.  "  One  night  I 
w^as  on  patrol  in  No  Man's  Land,  and  sud- 
denly I  came  face  to  face  with  a  German 
about  my  own  age.  It  was  a  question  of  his 
life  or  mine.  We  fought  like  wild  beasts. 
When  I  came  back  that  night  I  was  covered 
from  head  to  foot  with  the  blood  and  brains 
of  that  German.  We  had  nothing  person- 
ally against  each  other.  He  did  not  want 
to  kill  me  any  more  than  I  wanted  to  kill 
him.  That  is  war.  I  did  my  duty  in  it,  but 
for  God's  sake  do  not  ask  me  to  talk  about 


108     CHRISTIANITY  AND  PROGRESS 

it !  I  want  to  forget  it."  That  is  war,  and 
no  more  damning  influence  can  be  thrown 
around  the  characters  of  people  in  general 
or  around  the  victims  of  military  discipline 
and  experience  in  particular  than  that  sup- 
plied by  war.  How  then  could  inconsistency 
be  made  more  extreme  than  by  saying 
that  Christianity  is  concerned  about  the 
souls  of  men  but  is  not  concerned  about  in- 
ternational good-wuU  and  co-operation? 
After  all,  the  approaches  to  the  human  prob- 
lem from  without  in  and  from  within  out  are 
not  antithetical,  but  supplementary.  This 
tunnel  must  be  dug  from  both  ends  and  until 
the  Church  thoroughly  grasps  that  fact  she 
will  lead  an  incomplete  and  ineffectual  life. 

IV 

The  purposes  of  Christianity  involve  so- 
cial reform,  not  only,  as  we  have  said,  be- 
cause we  must  accomplish  environmental 
change  if  we  are  to  achieve  widespread  in- 
dividual transformation,  but  also  because  we 
must  reorganize  social  life  and  the  ideas 
that  underlie  it  if  we  are  to  maintain  and 
get  adequately  expressed  the  individual's 
Christian  spirit  when  once  he  has  been 
transformed.  Granted  a  man  with  an  in- 
wardly remotived  life,  sincerely  desirous  of 


GOSPEL  AND  SOCIAL  PROGRESS    109 

living  Christianly,  see  what  a  situation  faces 
him  in  the  present  organization  of  our  eco- 
nomic world!  Selfishness  consists  in  facing 
any  human  relationship  with  the  main  in- 
tent of  getting  from  it  for  oneself  all  the 
pleasure  and  profit  that  one  can.  There  are 
folk  who  use  their  families  so.  They  live 
like  parasites  on  the  beautiful  institution  of 
family  life,  getting  as  much  as  possible  for 
as  little  as  possible.  There  are  folk  who  use 
the  nation  so.  To  them  their  country  is  a 
gigantic  grab-bag  from  which  their  greedy 
hands  may  snatch  civic  security  and  com- 
mercial gain.  For  such  we  have  hard  and 
bitter  names.  There  is,  however,  one  rela- 
tionship— business — where  we  take  for 
granted  this  very  attitude  which  every- 
where else  we  heartily  condemn.  Multi- 
tudes of  folk  go  up  to  that  central  human 
relationship  with  the  frank  and  unabashed 
confession  that  their  primary  motive  is  to 
make  out  of  it  all  that  they  can  for  them- 
selves. They  never  have  organized  their 
motives  around  the  idea  that  the  major 
meaning  of  business  is  public  service. 

The  fact  is,  however,  that  all  around  us 
forms  of  business  already  have  developed 
where  we  count  it  shame  for  a  man  to  be 
chiefly  motived  by  a  desire  for  private  gain. 


no     CHRISTIANITY  AND  PROGRESS 

If  you  thought  that  the  preacher  were  in 
love  with  his  purse  more  than  with  his  Gos- 
pel, you  would  not  come  again  to  hear  him, 
and  you  would  be  right ;  if  you  thought  that 
the  teacher  of  your  children  cared  for  pay- 
day first  and  for  teaching  second,  you  would 
find  another  teacher  for  them  tomorrow, 
and  you  ought  to ;  if  you  thought  that  your 
physician  cared  more  for  his  fees  than  he 
did  for  his  patients,  you  would  discharge 
him  to-night  and  seek  for  a  man  more 
worthy  of  his  high  profession;  if  you  had 
reason  to  suppose  that  the  judges  of  the 
Supreme  Court  in  Washington  cared  more 
for  their  salary  than  they  did  for  justice,  you 
could  not  easily  measure  your  indignation 
and  your  shame.  In  the  development  of 
human  life  few  things  are  nobler  than  the 
growth  of  the  professional  spirit,  where  in 
wide  areas  of  enterprise,  not  private  gain, 
but  fine  workmanship  and  public  service 
have  become  the  major  motives.  If  one 
says  that  a  sharp  line  of  distinction  is  to  be 
drawn  between  what  we  call  professions  and 
what  we  call  business,  he  does  not  know 
history.  Nursing,  as  a  gainful  calling,  a 
hundred  years  ago  was  a  mercenary  affair 
into  which  undesirable  people  went  for  what 
they  could  get  out  of  it.     If  nursing  to-day 


GOSPEL  AND  SOCIAL  PROGRESS    111 

is  a  great  profession,  where  pride  of  work- 
manship and  love  of  service  increasingly  are 
in  control,  it  is  because  Florence  Nightin- 
gale, and  a  noble  company  after  her,  have 
insisted  that  nursing  essentially  is  service 
and  that  all  nurses  ought  to  organize  their 
motives  around  that  idea. 

What  is  the  essential  difference  between 
professions  and  business?  Why  should  the 
building  of  a  schoolhouse  be  a  carnival  of 
private  profit  for  labourers  and  contractors 
alike,  when  the  teaching  in  it  is  expected  to 
be  full  of  the  love  of  fine  w^orkmanship  and 
the  joy  of  usefulness?  Why,  when  a  w^ar  is 
on,  must  the  making  of  munitions  here  be  a 
wild  debauch  of  private  profits,  but  the  fir- 
ing of  them  "  over  there  "  be  a  matter  of 
self-forgetful  sacrifice?  Why,  in  selling  a 
food  which  is  essential  to  health,  should  the 
head  of  a  sugar  corporation  say  with  im- 
punity, "  I  think  it  is  fair  to  get  out  of  the 
consumers  all  you  can,  consistent  with  the 
business  proposition,"  when  the  physician  is 
expected  to  care  for  the  undernourished 
with  a  devoted  professional  spirit  utterly 
different  from  the  sugar  magnate's  words? 
There  is  no  real  answer  to  that  "  why." 
The  fact  is  that  for  multitudes  of  people 
business  is  still  in  the  unredeemed  state  in 


112     CHRISTIANITY  AND  PROGRESS 

which  nursing  and  teaching  and  doctoring 
were  at  the  beginning,  and  nothing  can  save 
us  from  the  personal  and  social  consequence 
of  this  unhappy  situation  except  the  clear 
vision  of  the  basic  meaning  of  business  in 
terms  of  service,  and  the  courageous  reor- 
ganization of  personal  motive  and  economic 
institutions  around  that  idea. 

If,  then,  Christianity  is  sincerely  inter- 
ested in  the  quality  of  human  spirits,  in  the 
motives  and  ideals  which  dominate  person- 
ality, she  must  be  interested  in  the  economic 
and  industrial  problems  of  our  day.  To  be 
sure,  many  ministers  make  fools  of  them- 
selves when  they  pass  judgment  on  ques- 
tions which  they  do  not  understand.  It  is 
true  that  a  church  is  much  more  peaceable 
and  undisturbing  when  it  tries  experiments 
upon  religious  emotions  with  colored  lights 
than  when  it  makes  reports  upon  the  steel 
trust.  Many  are  tempted,  therefore,  to  give 
in  to  irritation  over  misdirected  ministerial 
energy  or  to  a  desire  for  emotional  comfort 
rather  than  an  aroused  conscience.  One  has 
only  to  listen  where  respectable  folk  most 
congregate  to  hear  the  cry:  let  the  Church 
keep  her  hands  off! 

Let  me  talk  for  a  moment  directly  to  that 
group.     If  you  mean,  by  your  distaste  for 


GOSPEL  AND  SOCIAL  PROGRESS    113 

the  Church's  interest  in  a  fairer  economic 
Hfe,  that  most  ministers  are  unfitted  by 
temperament  and  training  to  talk  wisely  on 
economic  policies  and  programs,  you  are 
right.  Do  you  suppose  that  we  ministers  do 
not  know  how  we  must  appear  to  you  when 
we  try  to  discuss  the  details  of  business? 
While,  however,  you  are  free  to  say  any- 
thing you  wish  about  the  ineptitude  of  min- 
isters in  economic  affairs  (and  we,  from  our 
inside  information,  will  probably  agree  with 
you),  yet  as  we  thus  put  ourselves  in  your 
places  and  try  to  see  the  situation  through 
your  eyes,  do  you  also  put  yourselves  in  our 
places  and  try  to  see  it  through  our  eyes ! 

I  speak,  I  am  sure,  in  the  name  of  thou- 
sands of  Christian  ministers  in  this  country 
endeavouring  to  do  their  duty  in  this  trying 
time.  We  did  not  go  into  the  ministry  of 
Jesus  Christ  either  for  money  or  for  fun.  If 
we  had  wanted  either  one  primarily,  we 
would  have  done  something  else  than 
preach.  We  went  in  because  we  believed  in 
Jesus  Christ  and  were  assured  that  only  he 
and  his  truth  could  medicine  the  sorry  ills 
of  this  sick  world.  And  now,  ministers  of 
Christ,  with  such  a  motive,  we  see  continu- 
ally some  of  the  dearest  things  we  work  for, 
some  of  the  fairest  results  that  we  achieve, 


114     CHRISTIANITY  AND  PROGRESS 

going  to  pieces  on  the  rocks  of  the  business 
world. 

You  wish  us  to  preach  against  sin,  but 
you  forget  that,  as  one  of  our  leading  soci- 
ologists has  said,  the  master  iniquities  of 
our  time  are  connected  with  money-making. 
You  wish  us  to  imbue  your  boys  and  girls 
with  ideal  standards  of  life,  but  all  too  often 
w^e  see  them,  having  left  our  schools  and 
colleges,  full  of  the  knightly  chivalry  of 
youth,  torn  in  the  world  of  business  between 
the  ideal  of  Christlikeness  and  the  selfish 
rivalry  of  commercial  conflict.  We  watch 
them  growing  sordid,  disillusioned,  merce- 
nary, spoiled  at  last  and  bereft  of  their 
youth's  fine  promise.  You  wish  us  to 
preach  human  brotherhood  in  Christ,  and 
then  we  see  that  the  one  chief  enemy  of 
brotherhood  between  men  and  nations  is 
economic  strife,  the  root  of  class  conscious- 
ness and  war.  You  send  some  of  us  as 
your  representatives  to  the  ends  of  the  earth 
to  proclaim  the  Saviour,  and  then  these  mis- 
sionaries send  back  word  that  the  non- 
Christian  world  knows  all  too  well  how  far 
from  dominant  in  our  business  life  our 
Christian  ideals  are  and  that  the  non- 
Christian  world  delays  accepting  our  Christ 
until  we  have  better  proved  that  his  prin- 


GOSPEL  AND  SOCIAL  PROGRESS    115 

ciples  will  work.  Everywhere  that  the 
Christian  minister  turns,  he  finds  his  dearest 
ideals  and  hopes  entangled  in  the  economic 
life.  Do  you  ask  us  then  under  these  con- 
ditions to  keep  our  hands  off?  In  God's 
name,  3^ou  ask  too  much ! 

In  the  sixteenth  century  the  great  conflict 
in  the  world's  life  centered  in  the  Church. 
The  Reformation  was  on.  All  the  vital 
questions  of  the  day  had  there  their  spring. 
In  the  eighteenth  century  the  great  conflict 
of  the  world's  life  lay  in  politics.  The 
American  and  French  revolutions  were 
afoot.  Democracy  had  struck  its  tents  and 
w^as  on  the  march.  All  the  vital  questions 
of  that  day  had  their  origin  there.  In  the 
twentieth  century  the  great  conflict  in  the 
world's  life  is  centered  in  economics.  The 
most  vital  questions  with  which  we  deal 
are  entangled  with  economic  motives  and 
institutions.  As  in  the  sixteenth  and 
eighteenth  centuries  great  changes  were  in- 
evitable, so  now^  the  economic  world  cannot 
possibly  remain  static.  The  question  is  not 
whether  changes  will  occur,  but  how  they 
wnll  occur,  under  whose  aegis  and  superin- 
tendence, by  whose  guidance  and  direction, 
and  how  much  better  the  world  will  be  when 
they  are  here.    Among  all  the  interests  that 


116     CHRISTIANITY  AND  PROGRESS 

are  vitally  concerned  with  the  nature  of 
these  changes  none  has  more  at  stake  than 
the  Christian  Church  with  her  responsibility 
for  the  cure  of  souls. 

V 

Still  another  point  of  contact  exists  be- 
tween the  Christian  purpose  and  social  re- 
form :  the  inevitable  demand  of  religious 
ideals  for  social  application.  The  ideal  of 
human  equality,  for  example,  came  into  our 
civilization  from  two  main  sources — the 
Stoic  philosophy  and  the  Christian  religion 
— and  in  both  cases  it  was  first  of  all  a  spir- 
itual insight,  not  a  social  program.  The 
Stoics  and  the  early  Christians  both  believed 
it  as  a  sentiment,  but  they  had  no  idea  of 
changing  the  world  to  conform  with  it. 
Paul  repeatedly  insisted  upon  the  equality 
of  all  men  before  God.  In  his  early  min- 
istry he  wrote  it  to  the  Galatians :  "  There 
can  be  neither  Jew  nor  Greek,  there  can  be 
neither  bond  nor  free,  there  can  be  no  male 
and  female ;  for  ye  all  are  one  man  in  Christ 
Jesus."  Later  he  wrote  it  to  the  Corinthi- 
ans :  "  For  in  one  Spirit  were  we  all  bap- 
tized into  one  body,  whether  Jews  or 
Greeks,  whether  bond  or  free ;  and  were  all 
made  to  drink  of  one  Spirit."     In  his  last 


GOSPEL  AND  SOCIAL  PROGRESS    117 

imprisonment  he  wrote  it  to  the  Colossians: 
"  There  cannot  be  Greek  and  Jew,  circum- 
cision and  uncircumcision,  barbarian,  Scyth- 
ian, bondman,  freeman;  but  Christ  is  all,  and 
in  all."  Yet  it  never  would  have  occurred 
to  Paul  to  disturb  the  social  custom  of  slav- 
ery or  to  question  the  divine  institution  of 
imperial  government. 

Nevertheless,  while  this  idea  of  human 
equality  did  not  at  first  involve  a  social  pro- 
gram, it  meant  something  real.  If  we  are 
to  understand  what  the  New  Testament 
means  by  the  equality  of  men  before  God, 
we  must  look  at  men  from  the  New  Testa- 
ment point  of  view.  Those  of  us  who  have 
been  up  in  an  aeroplane  know  that  the 
higher  we  fly  the  less  difference  we  see  in 
the  elevation  of  things  upon  the  earth.  This 
man's  house  is  plainly  higher  than  that 
man's  when  we  are  on  the  ground  but,  two 
thousand  feet  up,  small  difference  can  we 
observe.  Now,  the  New  Testament  flies 
high.  It  frankly  looks  from  a  great  altitude 
at  the  distinctions  that  seem  so  important 
on  the  earth.  We  say  that  racial  differences 
are  very  important — a  great  gulf  between 
Jew  and  Gentile.  We  insist  that  cultural 
traditions  make  an  immense  distinction — 
that  to  be  a  Scythian  or  to  be  barbarian  is 


118     CHRISTIANITY  AND  PROGRESS 

widely  separated  from  being  Greek.  We 
are  sure  that  the  economic  distinction  be- 
tween bondman  and  freeman  is  enormous. 
But  all  the  while  these  superiorities  and  in- 
feriorities, which  we  magnify,  seem  from 
Paul's  vantage  point  not  nearly  so  important 
or  so  real  as  we  think  they  are.  He  is  sure 
about  this  central  truth,  that  God  asks  no 
questions  about  caste  or  colour  or  race  or 
wealth  or  social  station.  All  men  stand 
alike  in  his  presence  and  in  the  Christian 
fellowship  must  be  regarded  from  his  point 
of  view. 

It  was  utterly  impossible,  however,  to 
keep  this  spiritual  insight  from  getting  ulti- 
mately into  a  social  program.  It  appealed 
to  motives  too  deep  and  powerful  to  make 
possible  its  segregation  as  a  religious  senti- 
ment. For  however  impractical  an  ideal 
this  thought  of  human  equality  may  seem  in 
general,  and  however  hard  it  may  be  to 
grant  to  others  in  particular,  it  is  never  hard 
for  us  to  claim  for  ourselves.  If  ever  we 
are  condescended  to,  does  any  assertion  rise 
more  quickly  in  our  thought  than  the  old 
cry  of  our  boyhood,  "  I  am  as  good  as  you 
are  "?  The  lad  in  school  in  ragged  clothes, 
who  sees  himself  outclassed  by  richer  boys, 
feels  it  hotly  rising  in  his  boyish  heart :  "  I 


GOSPEL  AND  SOCIAL  PROGRESS    119 

am  as  good  as  you  are."  The  poor  man 
who,  with  an  anxiety  he  cannot  subdue  and 
yet  dares  not  disclose,  is  desperately  trying 
to  make  both  ends  meet,  feels  it  as  he  sees 
more  fortunate  men  in  luxury:  "I  am  as 
good  as  you  are."  The  negro  who  has  tried 
himself  out  with  his  white  brethren,  who 
wears,  it  may  be,  an  honour  key  from  a  great 
university,  who  is  a  scholar  and  a  gentle- 
man, and  yet  who  is  continually  denied  the 
most  common  courtesies  of  human  inter- 
course— he  says  in  his  heart,  although  the 
words  may  not  pass  his  lips,  "  I  am  as  good 
as  you  are."  Now,  the  New  Testament  took 
that  old  cry  of  the  human  heart  for  equality 
and  turned  it  upside  down.  It  became  no 
longer  for  the  Christian  a  bitter  demand  for 
one's  rights,  but  a  glad  acknowledgment  of 
one's  duty.  It  did  not  clamour,  ''  I  am  as 
good  as  you  are  " ;  it  said,  "  You  are  as  good 
as  I  am."  The  early  Christians  at  their  best 
went  out  into  the  world  with  that  cry  upon 
their  lips.  The  Jewish  Christians  said  it  to 
the  Gentiles  and  the  Gentiles  to  the  Jews; 
the  Scythians  and  barbarians  said  it  to  the 
Greeks  and  the  Greeks  said  it  in  return;  the 
bond  said  it  to  the  free  and  the  free  said  it 
to  the  bond.  The  New  Testament  Church 
in  this  resrard  was  one  of  the  most  extraor- 


120     CHRISTIANITY  AND  PROGRESS 

dinary  upheavals  in  history,  and  to-day 
the  best  hopes  of  the  world  depend  upon 
that  spirit  which  still  says  to  all  men  over  all 
the  differences  of  race  and  colour  and  sta- 
tion, "  You  are  as  good  as  I  am." 

To  be  sure,  before  this  equalitarian  ideal 
could  be  embodied  in  a  social  program  it  had 
to  await  the  coming  of  the  modern  age  with 
its  open  doors,  its  freer  movements  of 
thought  and  life,  its  belief  in  progress,  its 
machinery  of  change.  But  even  in  the  stag- 
nation of  the  intervening  centuries  the  old 
Stoic-Christian  ideal  never  was  utterly  for- 
gotten. Lactantius,  a  Christian  writer  of 
the  fourth  century,  said  that  God,  who  cre- 
ates and  inspires  men,  "  willed  that  all 
should  be  equal."  ^  Gregory  the  Great,  at 
the  end  of  the  sixth  century,  said  that  "  By 
nature  we  are  all  equal."  ^  For  ages  this 
spiritual  insight  remained  dissociated  from 
any  social  program,  but  now  the  inevitable 
connection  has  been  made.  Old  caste  sys- 
tems and  chattel  slavery  have  gone  down 
before  this  ideal.  Aristotle  argued  that 
slavery    ethically    was    right    because    men 


IL.C.F.  Lactantius:  The  Divine  Institutes,  Book  V, 
Chap.  XV,  xvi. 

^Gregory  the  Great:  Moralium  Libri,  Pars  quarta, 
Lib.  XXI,  Caput  XV — "  Omnes  namque  homines  natura 
aequales  sumus." 


GOSPEL  AND  SOCIAL  PROGRESS    121 

were  essentially  and  unchangeably  masters 
or  slaves  by  nature.  Somehow  that  would 
not  sound  plausible  to  us,  even  though  the 
greatest  mind  of  all  antiquity  did  say  it. 
Whatever  may  be  the  differences  between 
men  and  races,  they  are  not  sufficient  to 
justify  the  ownership  of  one  man  by  an- 
other. The  ideal  of  equality  has  wrecked 
old  aristocracies  that  seemed  to  have  firm 
hold  on  permanence.  If  one  would  feel 
again  the  thrill  which  men  felt  when  first 
the  old  distinctions  lost  their  power,  one 
should  read  once  more  the  songs  of  Robert 
Burns.  They  often  seem  commonplaces  to 
us  now,  but  they  were  not  commonplaces 
then: 

"  For  a'  that  and  a'  that, 
Their  dignities,  and  a'  that; 
The  pith  o'  sense  and  pride  o'  worth 
Are  higher  rank  than  a'  that !" 

This  ideal  has  made  equality  before  the  law 
one  of  the  maxims  of  our  civilized  govern- 
ments, failure  in  which  wakens  our  appre- 
hension and  our  fear;  it  has  made  equal  suf- 
frage a  fact,  although  practical  people  only 
yesterday  laughed  at  it  as  a  dream;  it  has 
made  equality  in  opportunity  for  an  educa- 
tion the  underlying  postulate  of  our  public 


122     CHRISTIANITY  AND  PROGRESS 

school  systems,  although  in  New  York  State 
seventy-five  years  ago  the  debate  was  still 
acute  as  to  whether  such  a  dream  ever  could 
come  true;  it  is  to-day  lifting  races,  long 
accounted  inferior,  to  an  eminence  where  in- 
creasingly their  equality  is  acknowledged. 
One  with  difficulty  restrains  his  scorn  for 
the  intellectual  impotence  of  so-called  wise 
men  who  think  all  idealists  mere  dreamers. 
Who  is  the  dreamer — the  despiser  or  the 
upholder  of  an  ideal  whose  upheavals  al- 
ready have  burst  through  old  caste  systems, 
upset  old  slave  systems,  wrecked  old  aristoc- 
racies, pushed  obscure  and  forgotten  masses 
of  mankind  up  to  rough  equality  in  court 
and  election  booth  and  school,  and  now  are 
rocking  the  foundations  of  old  racial  and  in- 
ternational and  economic  ideas?  The  prac- 
tical applications  of  this  ideal,  as,  for  exam- 
ple, to  the  coloured  problem  in  America,  are 
so  full  of  difhculty  that  no  one  need  be 
ashamed  to  confess  that  he  does  not  see  in 
detail  how  the  principle  can  be  made  to 
work.  Nevertheless,  so  deep  in  the  essen- 
tial nature  of  things  is  the  fact  of  man- 
kind's fundamental  unity,  that  only  God  can 
foresee  to  what  end  the  application  of  it  yet 
may  come.  At  any  rate,  it  is  clear  that  the 
Christian   ideal    of   human    equality   before 


GOSPEL  AND  SOCIAL  PROGRESS    123 

God  can  no  longer  be  kept  out  of  a  social 
program. 

VI 

There  is,  then,  no  standing-ground  left  for 
a  narrowly  individualistic  Christianity.  To 
talk  of  redeeming  personality  while  one  is 
careless  of  the  social  environments  which 
ruin  personality;  to  talk  of  building  Christ- 
like character  while  one  is  complacent  about 
an  economic  system  that  is  definitely  organ- 
ized about  the  idea  of  selfish  profit;  to  praise 
Christian  ideals  while  one  is  blind  to  the  in- 
evitable urgency  with  which  they  insist  on 
getting  themselves  expressed  in  social  pro- 
grams— all  this  is  vanity.  It  is  deplorable, 
therefore,  that  the  Christian  forces  are 
tempted  to  draw  apart,  some  running  up  the 
banner  of  personal  regeneration  and  some 
rallying  around  the  flag  of  social  reforma- 
tion. The  division  is  utterly  needless. 
Doubtless  our  own  individual  ways  of  com- 
ing into  the  Christian  life  influence  us 
deeply  here.  Some  of  us  came  into  the 
Christian  experience  from  a  sense  of  indi- 
vidual need  alone.  We  needed  for  ourselves 
sins  forgiven,  peace  restored,  hope  be- 
stowed. God  meant  to  us  first  of  all  satis- 
faction for  our  deepest  personal  wants. 


124     CHRISTIANITY  AND  PROGRESS 

"  Rock  of  Ages,  cleft  for  me, 
Let  me  hide  myself  in  Thee  " — 

such  was  our  cry  and  such  was  our  salva- 
tion. If  now  we  are  socially  minded,  if  we 
are  concerned  for  economic  and  interna- 
tional righteousness,  that  is  an  enlargement 
of  our  Christian  outlook  which  has  grown 
out  of  and  still  is  rooted  back  in  our  indi- 
vidual need  and  experience  of  God. 

Some  of  us,  however,  did  not  come  into 
fellowship  with  God  by  that  route  at  all. 
We  came  in  from  the  opposite  direction. 
The  character  in  the  Old  Testament  who 
seems  to  me  the  worthiest  exhibition  of 
personal  religion  before  Jesus  is  the  prophet 
Jeremiah,  but  Jeremiah  started  his  religious 
experience,  not  with  a  sense  of  individual 
need,  but  with  a  burning,  patriotic,  social 
passion.  He  was  concerned  for  Judah. 
Her  iniquities,  long  accumulating,  were 
bringing  upon  her  an  irretrievable  disaster. 
He  laid  his  soul  upon  her  soul  and  sought  to 
breathe  into  her  the  breath  of  life.  Then, 
when  he  saw  the  country  he  adored,  the 
civilization  he  cherished,  crashing  into  ruin, 
he  was  thrown  back  personally  on  God.  He 
started  with  social  passion;  he  ended  with 
social  passion  plus  personal  religion.     Some 


GOSPEL  AND  SOCIAL  PROGRESS    125 

of  God's   greatest  servants   have  come  to 
know  him  so. 

Henry  Ward  Beecher  once  said  that  a 
text  is  a  small  gate  into  a  large  field  where 
one  can  wander  about  as  he  pleases,  and  that 
the  trouble  with  most  ministers  is  that  they 
spend  all  their  time  swinging  on  the  gate. 
That  same  figure  applies  to  the  entrance 
which  many  of  us  made  into  the  Christian 
experience.  Some  of  us  came  in  by  the  gate 
of  personal  religion,  and  we  have  been 
swinging  on  it  ever  since;  and  some  of  us 
came  in  by  the  gate  of  social  passion  for  the 
regeneration  of  the  world,  and  we  have  been 
swinging  on  that  gate  ever  since.  We  both 
are  wrong.  These  are  two  gates  into  the 
same  city,  and  it  is  the  city  of  our  God.  It 
would  be  one  of  the  greatest  blessings  to  the 
Christian  church  both  at  home  and  on  the 
foreign  field  if  we  could  come  together  on 
this  question  where  separation  is  so  needless 
and  so  foolish.  If  some  of  us  started  with 
emphasis  upon  personal  religion,  we  have  no 
business  to  stop  until  we  understand  the 
meaning  of  social  Christianity.  If  some  of 
us  started  with  emphasis  upon  the  social 
campaign,  we  have  no  business  to  rest  until 
we  learn  the  deep  secrets  of  personal  relig- 
ion.    The  redemption  of  personality  is  the 


126     CHRISTIANITY  AND  PROGRESS 

great  aim  of  the  Christian  Gospel,  and, 
therefore,  to  inspire  the  inner  lives  of  men 
and  to  lift  outward  burdens  which  impede 
their  spiritual  growth  are  both  alike  Chris- 
tian service  to  bring  in  the  Kingdom. 


LECTURE  IV 

PROGRESSIVE  CHRISTIANITY 

I 

HITHERTO  in  the  development  of  our 
thought,  we  have  been  considering 
the  Christian  Gospel  as  an  entity  set 
in  the  midst  of  a  progressive  world,  and  we 
have  been  studying  the  new  Christian  atti- 
tudes which  this  influential  environment  has 
been  eliciting.  The  Gospel  has  been  in  our 
thought  like  an  individual  who,  finding  him- 
self in  novel  circumstances,  reacts  toward 
them,  in  ways  appropriate  alike  to  them  and 
to  his  own  character.  The  influence  of  the 
idea  of  progress  upon  Christianity,  however, 
is  more  penetrating  than  such  a  figure  can 
adequately  portray.  For  no  one  can  long 
ponder  the  significance  of  our  generation's 
progressive  ways  of  thinking  without  run- 
ning straight  upon  this  question:  is  not 
Christianity  itself  progressive?  In  the 
midst  of  a  changing  world  does  not  it  also 
change,  so  that,  reacting  upon  the  new  ideas 
of  progress,  it  not  only  assimilates  and  uses 

127 


128     CHRISTIANITY  AND  PROGRESS 

them,  but  is  itself  an  illustration  of  them? 
Where  everything  else  in  man's  life  in  its 
origin  and  growth  is  conceived,  not  in  terms 
of  static  and  final  creation  or  revelation,  but 
in  terms  of  development,  can  religion  be  left 
out?  Instead  of  being  a  pond  around  which 
once  for  all  a  man  can  walk  and  take  its 
measure,  a  final  and  completed  whole,  is  not 
Christianity  a  river  w^hich,  maintaining  still 
reliance  upon  the  historic  springs  from 
which  it  flows,  gathers  in  new  tributaries  on 
its  course  and  is  itself  a  changing,  growing 
and  progressive  movement?  The  question 
is  inevitable  in  any  study  of  the  relationship 
between  the  Gospel  and  progress,  and  its 
implications  are  so  far-reaching  that  it  de- 
serves our  careful  thought. 

Certainly  it  is  clear  that  already  modern 
ideas  of  progress  have  had  so  penetrating  an 
influence  upon  Christianity  as  to  affect,  not 
its  external  reactions  and  methods  only,  nor 
yet  its  intellectual  formulations  alone,  but 
deeper  still  its  very  mood  and  inward  tem- 
per. Whether  or  not  Christianity  ought  to 
be  a  changing  movement  in  a  changing 
world,  it  certainly  has  been  that  and  is  so 
still,  and  the  change  can  be  seen  going  on 
now  in  the  very  atmosphere  in  which  it  lives 
and  moves  and  has  its  being.     For  example, 


PROGRESSIVE  CHRISTIANITY      129 

consider  the  attitude  of  resignation  to  the 
will  of  God,  which  was  characteristic  of 
medieval  Christianity.  As  we  saw  in  our 
first  lecture,  the  medieval  age  did  not  think 
of  human  life  upon  this  earth  in  terms  of 
progress.  The  hopes  of  men  did  not  re- 
volve about  any  Utopia  to  be  expected  here. 
History  was  not  even  a  glacier,  moving 
slowly  toward  the  sunny  meadows.  It  did 
not  move  at  all;  it  was  not  intended  to 
move ;  it  was  standing  still.  To  be  sure,  the 
thirteenth  century  was  one  of  the  greatest 
in  the  annals  of  the  race.  In  it  the  fore- 
most European  universities  were  founded, 
the  sublimest  Gothic  cathedrals  were  built, 
some  of  the  world's  finest  works  of  handi- 
craft were  made;  in  it  Cimabue  and  Giotto 
painted,  Dante  wrote,  St.  Thomas  Aquinas 
philosophized,  and  St.  Francis  of  Assisi 
lived.  The  motives,  however,  which  origi- 
nated and  sustained  this  magnificent  out- 
burst of  creative  energy  were  other- 
worldly— they  were  not  concerned  with  an- 
ticipations of  a  happier  lot  for  humankind 
upon  this  earth.  The  medieval  age  did  not 
believe  that  man's  estate  upon  the  earth 
ever  would  be  fundamentally  improved,  and 
in  consequence  took  the  only  reasonable  at- 
titude,  resignation.     When   famines   came, 


130     CHRISTIANITY  AND  PROGRESS 

God  sent  them;  they  were  punishment  for 
sin;  his  will  be  done!  When  wars  came, 
they  were  the  flails  of  God  to  thresh  his 
people;  his  will  be  done!  Men  were  re- 
signed to  slavery  on  the  ground  that  God 
had  made  men  to  be  masters  and  slaves. 
They  were  resigned  to  feudalism  and  abso- 
lute monarchy  on  the  ground  that  God  had 
made  men  to  be  rulers  and  ruled.  What- 
ever was  had  been  ordained  by  the  Divine  or 
had  been  allowed  by  him  in  punishment  for 
man's  iniquity.  To  rebel  was  sin;  to  doubt 
was  heresy;  to  submit  was  piety.  The  He- 
brew prophets  had  not  been  resigned,  nor 
Jesus  Christ,  nor  Paul.  The  whole  New 
Testament  blazes  with  the  hope  of  the  king- 
dom of  righteousness  coming  upon  earth. 
But  the  medieval  age  was  resigned.  Its  real 
expectations  were  post-mortem  hopes.  So 
far  as  this  earth  was  concerned,  men  must 
submit. 

To  be  sure,  in  those  inner  experiences 
where  we  must  endure  what  we  cannot  help, 
resignation  will  always  characterize  a  deeply 
religious  life.  All  life  is  not  under  our  con- 
trol, to  be  freely  mastered  by  our  thought 
and  toil.  There  are  areas  where  scientific 
knowledge  gives  us  power  to  do  amazing 
things,  but  all  around  them  are  other  areas 


PROGRESSIVE  CHRISTIANITY      131 

which  our  hands  cannot  regulate.  Orion 
and  the  Pleiades  were  not  made  for  our 
fingers  to  swing,  and  our  engineering  does 
not  change  sunrise  or  sunset  nor  make  the 
planets  one  whit  less  or  more.  So,  in  the 
experiences  of  our  inward  life,  around  the 
realm  which  we  can  control  is  that  other 
realm  where  move  the  mysterious  provi- 
dences of  God,  beyond  our  power  to  under- 
stand and  as  uncontrollable  by  us  as  the 
tides  are  by  the  fish  that  live  in  them.  Cap- 
tain Scott  found  the  South  Pole,  only  to  dis- 
cover that  another  man  had  been  there  first. 
When,  on  his  return  from  the  disappointing 
quest,  the  pitiless  cold,  the  endless  bliz- 
zards, the  failing  food,  had  worn  down  the 
strength  of  the  little  company  and  in  their 
tent  amid  the  boundless  desolation  they 
waited  for  the  end  while  the  life  flames 
burned  low.  Captain  Scott  wrote:  "  I  do  not 
regret  this  journey.  .  .  .  We  took  risks,  we 
knew  we  took  them ;  things  have  come  out 
against  us,  and  therefore  we  have  no  cause 
for  complaint,  but  bow  to  the  will  of  Provi- 
dence, determined  still  to  do  our  best  to  the 
last."  ^    That  is  resignation  at  its  noblest. 


^Leonard  Huxley:  Scott's  Last  Expedition,  Vol.  I 
The  Journals  of  Captain  R.  F.  Scott,  Rn.,  C.  V.  O.,  p. 
417. 


132     CHRISTIANITY  AND  PROGRESS 

When,  however,  a  modern  Christian  tries 
to  do  what  the  medieval  Christians  did — 
make  this  attitude  of  resignation  cover  the 
whole  field  of  life,  make  it  the  dominant  ele- 
ment in  their  religion,  the  proof  of  their 
trust  and  the  test  of  their  piety — he  finds 
himself  separated  from  the  most  character- 
istic and  stirring  elements  in  his  generation. 
We  are  not  resigned  anywhere  else.  Every- 
where else  we  count  it  our  pride  and  glory 
to  be  unresigned.  AVe  are  not  resigned  even 
to  a  thorny  cactus,  whose  spiky  exterior 
seems  a  convincing  argument  against  its 
use  for  food.  When  we  see  a  barren  plain 
we  do  not  say  as  our  fathers  did:  God  made 
plains  so  in  his  inscrutable  wisdom ;  his  will 
be  done!  We  call  for  irrigation  and,  when 
the  fructifying  waters  flow,  we  say.  Thy 
will  be  done!  in  the  way  we  think  God 
wishes  to  have  it  said.  We  do  not  pas- 
sively submit  to  God's  will;  we  actively 
assert  it.  The  scientific  control  of  life  at 
thi-s  point  has  deeply  changed  our  religious 
mood.  We  are  not  resigned  to  pestilences 
and  already  have  plans  drawn  up  to  make 
the  yellow  fever  germ  "  as  extinct  as  the 
woolly  rhinoceros."  We  are  not  even  re- 
signed to  the  absence  of  wireless  tele- 
phony  when    once    we    have    imagined   its 


PROGRESSIVE  CHRISTIANITY      133 

presence,  or  to  the  inconvenience  of  slow 
methods  of  travel  when  once  we  have  in- 
vented swift  ones.  Not  to  ilHteracy  nor 
to  child  labour  nor  to  the  white  plague 
nor  to  commercialized  vice  nor  to  recur- 
rent unemployment  are  we,  at  our  best, 
resigned. 

This  change  of  mood  did  not  come  easily. 
So  strongly  did  the  medieval  spirit  of  resig- 
nation, submissive  in  a  static  world,  keep  its 
grip  upon  the  Church  that  the  Church  often 
defiantly  withstood  the  growth  of  this  un- 
resigned  attitude  of  which  we  have  been 
speaking  and  in  which  we  glory.  Lightning 
rods  were  vehemently  denounced  by  many 
ministers  as  an  unwarranted  interference 
with  God's  use  of  lightning.  When  God  hit 
a  house  he  meant  to  hit  it;  his  will  be  done! 
This  attitude,  thus  absurdly  applied,  had  in 
more  important  realms  a  lamentable  conse- 
quence. The  campaign  of  Christian  mis- 
sions to  foreign  lands  was  bitterly  fought  in 
wide  areas  of  the  Christian  Church  because 
if  God  intended  to  damn  the  heathen  he 
should  be  allowed  to  do  so  without  inter- 
ference from  us;  his  will  be  done!  As  for 
slavery,  the  last  defense  which  it  had  in  this 
country  was  on  religious  grounds :  that  God 
had  ordained  it  and  that  it  was  blasphemous 


134    CHRISTIANITY  AND  PROGRESS 

to  oppose  his  ordination.  In  a  word,  this 
spirit  of  passive  resignation  has  been  so 
deeply  ingrained  in  religious  thinking  that 
it  has  become  oftentimes  a  serious  reproach 
to  Christian  people. 

Now,  however,  the  mood  of  modern 
Christianity  is  decisively  in  contrast  with 
that  medieval  spirit.  Moreover,  we  think 
that  we  are  close  to  the  Master  in  this  atti- 
tude, for  whatever  difference  in  outward 
form  of  expectation  there  may  be  between 
his  day  and  ours,  when  he  said :  "  Thy  king- 
dom come.  Thy  will  be  done,  as  in  heaven, 
so  on  earth,"  that  was  not  passive  submis- 
sion to  God's  will  but  an  aggressive  prayer 
for  the  victory  of  God  and  righteousness; 
it  was  not  lying  down  under  the  will  of  God 
as  something  to  be  endured,  but  active  loy- 
alty to  the  will  of  God  as  something  to  be 
achieved.  To  be  resigned  to  evil  conditions 
on  this  earth  is  in  our  eyes  close  to  essential 
sin.  If  any  one  who  calls  himself  a  con- 
servative Christian  doubts  his  share  in  this 
anti-medieval  spirit,  let  him  test  himself  and 
see.  In  1836  the  Rev.  Leonard  Wood, 
D.  D.,  wrote  down  this  interesting  state- 
ment: "I  remember  when  I  could  reckon 
up  among  my  acquaintances  forty  ministers, 
and  none  of  them  at  a  great  distance,  who 


PROGRESSIVE  CHRISTIANITY       135 

were  either  drunkards  or  far  addicted  to 
drinking.  I  could  mention  an  ordination 
which  took  place  about  twenty  years  ago  at 
which  I  myself  was  ashamed  and  grieved  to 
see  two  aged  ministers  literally  drunk,  and 
a  third  indecently  excited."  ^  Our  forefa- 
thers were  resigned  to  that,  but  we  are  not. 
The  most  conservative  of  us  so  hates  the 
colossal  abomination  of  the  liquor  traffic, 
that  we  do  not  propose  to  cease  our  fight 
until  victory  has  been  won.  We  are  bel- 
ligerently unresigned.  Or  when  militarism 
proves  itself  an  intolerable  curse,  we  do  not 
count  it  a  divine  punishment  and  prepare 
ourselves  to  make  the  best  of  its  continu- 
ance. We  propose  to  end  it.  Militarism, 
which  in  days  of  peace  cries,  Build  me  vast 
armaments,  spend  enough  upon  a  single 
dreadnaught  to  remake  the  educational  sys- 
tem of  a  whole  state;  militarism,  which  in 
the  days  of  war  cries.  Give  me  your  best 
youth  to  slay,  leave  the  crippled  and  defect- 
ive to  propagate  the  race,  give  me  your  best 
to  slay ;  militarism,  which  lays  its  avaricious 
hand  on  every  new  invention  to  make  gre- 
garious death  more  swift  and  terrible,  and 
when  war  is  over  makes  the  starved  bodies 
of  innumerable  children  walk  in  its  train  for 


iKirby  Page:    The  Sword  or  the  Cross,  p.  41. 


136     CHRISTIANITY  AND  PROGRESS 

pageantry, — we  are  not  resigned  to  that. 
We  count  it  our  Christian  duty  to  be  tire- 
lessly unresigned. 

Here  is  a  new  mood  in  Christianity,  born 
out  of  the  scientific  control  of  life  and  the 
modern  ideas  of  progress,  and,  however 
consonant  it  may  be  with  the  spirit  of  the 
New  Testament,  it  exhibits  in  the  nature  of 
its  regulative  conceptions  and  in  its  earthly 
hopes  a  transformation  within  Christianity 
which  penetrates  deep.  Progressive  change 
is  not  simply  an  environment  to  which 
Christianity  conforms;  it  is  a  fact  which 
Christianity  exhibits. 

II 
This  idea  that  Christianity  is  itself  a  pro- 
gressive movement  instead  of  a  static  final- 
ity involves  som.e  serious  alterations  in  the 
historic  conceptions  of  the  faith,  as  soon  as 
it  is  applied  to  theology.  Very  early  in 
Christian  history  the  presence  of  conflict- 
ing heresies  led  the  church  to  define  its 
faith  in  creeds  and  then  to  regard  these 
as  final  formulations  of  Christian  doctrine, 
incapable  of  amendment  or  addition.  Ter- 
tullian,  about  204  A.  D.,  spoke  of  the 
creedal  standard  of  his  day  as  ''  a  rule  of 
faith  changeless  and  incapable  of  reforma- 


PROGRESSIVE  CHRISTIANITY       137 

tion."  ^  From  that  day  until  our  own,  when 
a  Roman  Catholic  Council  has  decreed  that 
"  the  definitions  of  the  Roman  Pontiff  are 
unchangeable,"  ^  an  unalterable  character 
has  been  ascribed  to  the  dogmas  of  the 
Church  of  Rome.  Indeed,  Pius  IX,  in  his 
Syllabus  of  Errors,  specifically  condemned 
the  modern  idea  that  "  Divine  revelation 
is  imperfect,  and,  therefore,  subject  to 
continual  and  indefinite  progress,  which 
corresponds  with  the  progress  of  human 
reason."  ^  Nor  did  Protestantism,  with  all 
the  reformation  which  it  wrought,  attack 
this  central  Catholic  conception  of  a  change- 
less content  and  formulation  of  faith.  Not 
what  the  Pope  said,  but  what  the  Bible  said, 
was  by  Protestants  unalterably  to  be  re- 
ceived. Change  there  might  be  in  the  sense 
that  unrealized  potentialities  involved  in  the 
original  deposit  might  be  brought  to  light — 
a  kind  of  development  which  not  only  Prot- 
estants but  Catholics  like  Cardinal  Newman 
have  willingly  allowed — but  whatever  had 


iTertullian :  De  Virginibus  Velandis,  Cap.  I — "  Regula 
quidem  fidei  una  omnino  est,  sola  immobilis  et  ir- 
reformabilis." 

2Vatican  Council,  July  18,  1870,  First  Dogmatic  Con- 
stitution on  the  Church  of  Christ,  Chapter  IV,  Concern- 
ing the  Infallible  Teaching  of  the  Roman  Pontiff. 

3The  Papal  Syllabus  of  Errors,  a.  d.  1864,  Sec.  1,  5. 


138     CHRISTIANITY  AND  PROGRESS 

once  been  stated  as  the  content  of  faith  by 
the  received  authorities  was  by  both  Cath- 
olics and  Prbtestants  regarded  as  unalter- 
ably so.  In  the  one  case,  if  the  Pope  had 
once  defined  a  dogma,  it  was  changeless ;  in 
the  other,  if  the  Bible  had  once  formulated 
a  pre-scientific  cosmology,  or  used  demoni- 
acal possession  as  an  explanation  of  dis- 
ease, or  personified  evil  in  a  devil,  all  such- 
mental  categories  were  changelessly  to  be 
received.  In  its  popular  forms  this  concep- 
tion of  Christianity  assumes  extreme  rigid- 
ity— Christianity  is  a  static  system  finally 
formulated,  a  deposit  to  be  accepted  in  toto 
if  at  all,  not  to  be  added  to,  not  to  be  sub- 
tracted from,  not  to  be  changed,  its  i's  all 
dotted  and  its  t's  all  crossed. 

The  most  crucial  problem  which  we  face 
in  our  religious  thinking  is  created  by  the 
fact  that  Christianity  thus  statically  con- 
ceived now  goes  out  into  a  generation 
where  no  other  aspect  of  life  is  conceived  in 
static  terms  at  all.  The  earth  itself  on 
which  we  live,  not  by  fiat  suddenly  enacted, 
but  by  long  and  gradual  processes,  became 
habitable,  and  man  upon  it  through  un- 
counted ages  grew  out  of  an  unknown  past 
into  his  present  estate.  Everything  within 
man's  life  has  grown,  is  growing,  and  appar- 


PROGRESSIVE  CHRISTIANITY      139 

ently  will  grow.  Music  developed  from 
crude  forms  of  rhythmic  noise  until  now,  by 
w^ay  of  Bach,  Beethoven  and  Wagner,  our 
modern  music,  still  developing,  has  grown 
to  forms  of  harmony  at  first  undreamed. 
Painting  developed  from  the  rough  outlines 
of  the  cavemen  until  now  possibilities  of 
expression  in  line  and  colour  have  been 
achieved  whose  full  expansion  we  cannot 
guess.  Architecture  evolved  from  the  crude 
huts  of  primitive  man  until  now  our  cathe- 
drals and  our  new  business  buildings  alike 
mark  an  incalculable  advance  and  prophesy 
an  unimaginable  future.  One  may  refuse 
to  call  all  development  real  progress,  may 
insist  upon  degeneration  as  well  as  better- 
ment through  change,  but,  even  so,  the  basic 
fact  remains  that  all  the  elements  which  go 
to  make  man's  life  come  into  being,  are 
what  they  are,  and  pass  out  of  what  they  are 
into  something  different,  through  processes 
of  continual  growth.  Our  business  methods 
change  until  the  commercial  wisdom  of  a 
few  years  ago  may  be  the  folly  of  to-day; 
our  m^oral  ideals  change  until  actions  once 
respectable  become  reprobate,  and  the 
heroes  of  one  generation  would  be  the  con- 
victs of  another;  our  science  changes  until 
ideas   that   men   once   were   burned   at   the 


140     CHRISTIANITY  AND  PROGRESS 

stake  for  entertaining  are  now  the  com- 
monplace axioms  of  every  school  boy's 
thought;  our  economics  change  until 
schools  of  thought  shaped  to  old  industrial 
conditions  are  as  outmoded  as  a  one-horse 
shay  beside  an  automobile ;  our  philosophy 
changes  like  our  science  when  Kant,  for  ex- 
ample, starts  a  revolution  in  man's  thinking, 
worthy,  as  he  claimed,  to  be  called  Coper- 
nican;  our  cultural  habits  change  until 
marooned  communities  in  the  Kentucky 
mountains,  "  our  contemporary  ancestors," 
having  let  the  stream  of  human  life  flow 
around  and  past  them,  seem  as  strange  to 
us  as  a  belated  what-not  in  a  modern  par- 
lour. The  perception  of  this  fact  of  pro- 
gressive change  is  one  of  the  regnant  in- 
fluences in  our  modern  life  and,  strangely 
enough,  so  far  from  disliking  it,  we  glory 
in  it;  in  our  expectancy  we  count  on 
change;  with  our  control  of  life  we  seek  to 
direct  it. 

Indeed  no  more  remarkable  difference 
distinguishes  the  modern  world  from  all 
that  went  before  than  its  attitude  toward 
change  itself.  The  medieval  world  idealized 
changelessness.  Its  very  astronomy  was 
the  apotheosis  of  the  unalterable.  The 
earth,  a  globe  full  of  mutation  and  decay; 


PROGRESSIVE  CHRISTIANITY      141 

around  it  eight  transparent  spheres  carrying 
the  heavenly  bodies,  each  outer  sphere  mov- 
ing more  slowly  than  its  inner  neighbour, 
while  the  ninth,  moving  most  slowly  of  all, 
moved  all  the  rest ;  last  of  all,  the  empyrean, 
blessed  with  changeless,  motionless  perfec- 
tion, the  abode  of  God — such  was  the  Ptole- 
maic astronomy  as  Dante  knew  it.  This 
idealization  of  changelessness  was  the  com- 
mon property  of  all  that  by  gone  world. 
The  Holy  Roman  Empire  was  the  endeav- 
our to  perpetuate  a  changeless  idea  of  po- 
litical theory  and  organization;  the  Holy 
Catholic  Church  was  the  endeavour  to  per- 
petuate a  changeless  formulation  of  relig- 
ious dogma  and  hierarchy;  the  Summa  of 
St.  Thomas  Aquinas  was  the  endeavour  to 
settle  forever  changeless  paths  for  the 
human  mind  to  walk  in.  To  that  ancient 
world  as  a  whole  the  perfect  was  the  fin- 
ished, and  therefore  it  was  immutable. 

How  different  our  modern  attitude  to- 
ward change  has  come  to  be !  We  believe 
in  change,  rely  on  it,  hope  for  it,  rejoice  in 
it,  are  determined  to  achieve  it  and  control 
it.  Nowhere  is  this  more  evident  than  in 
our  thought  of  the  meaning  of  knowledge. 
In  thfe  medieval  age  knowledge  was  spun  as 
a  spider  spins  his  web      Thinking  simply 


142     CHRISTIANITY  AND  PROGRESS 

made  evident  what  already  was  involved  in 
an  accepted  proposition.  A  premise  was 
drawn  out  into  its  filaments  and  then  woven 
into  a  fabric  of  new  form  but  of  the  same 
old  material.  Knowledge  did  not  start  from 
actual  things;  it  did  not  intend  to  change 
actual  things ;  and  the  shelves  of  the  libra- 
ries groan  with  the  burden  of  that  endless 
and  largely  futile  cogitation.  Then  the  new 
knowledge  began  from  the  observation  of 
things  as  they  really  are  and  from  the  use  of 
that  observation  for  the  purposes  of  human 
life.  Once  a  lad,  seventeen  years  old,  went 
into  the  cathedral  at  Pisa  to  worship.  Soon 
he  forgot  the  service  and  watched  a  chan- 
delier, swinging  from  the  lofty  roof.  He 
wondered  whether,  no  matter  how  change- 
able the  length  of  its  arc,  its  oscillations  al- 
ways consumed  the  same  time  and,  because 
he  had  no  other  means,  he  timed  its  mo- 
tion by  the  beating  of  his  pulse.  That  was 
one  time  when  a  boy  went  to  church  and  did 
well  to  forget  the  service.  He  soon  began  to 
wonder  whether  he  could  not  make  a  pendu- 
lum which,  swinging  like  the  chandeliers, 
would  do  useful  business  for  men.  He  soon 
began  to  discover,  in  what  he  had  seen  that 
day,  new  light  on  the  laws  of  planetary  mo- 
tion.   That  was  one  of  the  turning  points  in 


PROGRESSIVE  CHRISTIANITY      143 

human  history — the  boy  was  GaHleo.  The 
consequences  of  this  new  method  are  all 
around  us  now.  The  test  of  knowledge  in 
modern  life  is  capacity  to  cause  change.  If 
a  man  really  knows  electricity  he  can  cause 
change;  he  can  illumine  cities  and  drive 
cars.  If  a  man  really  knows  engineering,  he 
can  cause  change ;  he  can  tunnel  rivers  and 
bridge  gulfs.  It  is  for  that  purpose  we  wish 
knowledge.  Instead  of  being  dreaded,  con- 
trolled change  has  become  the  chief  desire 
of  modern  life. 

When,  therefore,  in  this  generation  with 
its  perception  of  growth  as  the  universal  law 
and  with  its  dependence  upon  controlled 
change  as  the  hope  of  man,  Christianity  en- 
deavours to  glorify  changelessness  and  to 
maintain  itself  in  unalterable  formulations, 
it  has  outlawed  itself  from  its  own  age.  An 
Indian  punkah-puller,  urged  by  his  mistress 
to  better  his  condition,  replied :  "  Mem 
Sahib,  my  father  pulled  a  punkah,  my  grand- 
father pulled  a  punkah,  all  my  ancestors  for 
four  million  ages  pulled  punkahs,  and,  be- 
fore that,  the  god  who  founded  our  caste 
pulled  a  punkah  over  Vishnu."  How  ut- 
terly lost  such  a  man  would  be  in  the 
dynamic  movements  of  our  modern  West- 
ern life ! — yet  not  more  lost  than  is  a  Chris- 


144     CHRISTIANITY  AND  PROGRESS 

tianity  which  tries  to  remain  static  in  a  pro- 
gressive world. 

Ill 

Among  the  influences  which  have  forced 
well-instructed  minds  first  to  accept  and 
then  to  glory  in  the  progressive  nature  of 
Christianity,  the  first  place  must  be  given 
to  the  history  of  religion  itself.  The  study 
of  religion's  ancient  records  in  ritual,  monu- 
ment and  book,  and  of  primitive  faiths  still 
existing  among  us  in  all  stages  of  develop- 
ment, has  made  clear  the  general  course 
which  man's  religious  life  has  traveled  from 
very  childish  beginnings  until  now.  From 
early  animism  in  its  manifold  expressions, 
through  polytheism,  kathenotheism,  heno- 
theism,  to  monotheism,  and  so  out  into  loft- 
ier possibilities  of  conceiving  the  divine 
nature  and  purpose — the  main  road  which 
man  has  traveled  in  his  religious  develop- 
ment now  is  traceable.  Nor  is  there  any 
place  where  it  is  more  easily  traceable  than 
in  our  own  Hebrew-Christian  tradition. 
One  of  the  fine  results  of  the  historical  study 
of  the  Scriptures  is  the  possibility  which 
now  exists  of  arranging  the  manuscripts  of 
the  Bible  in  approximately  chronological 
order  and  then  tracing  through  them  the 


PROGRESSIVE  CHRISTIANITY      146 

unfolding  growth  of  the  faiths  and  hopes 
which  come  to  their  flower  in  the  Gospel  of 
Christ.  Consider,  for  example,  the  exhila- 
rating story  of  the  developing  conception 
of  Jehovah's  character  from  the  time  he  was 
worshiped  as  a  mountain-god  in  the  desert 
until  he  became  know^n  as  the  "  God  and 
Father  of  our  Lord  Jesus  Christ." 

We  are  explicitly  told  that  the  history  of 
Jehovah's  relationship  with  Israel  began  at 
Sinai  and  that  before  that  time  the  Hebrew 
fathers  had  never  even  heard  his  name."^ 
There  on  a  mountain-top  in  the  Sinaitic 
wilderness  dwelt  this  new-found  god,  so 
anthropomorphically  conceived  that  he 
could  hide  Moses  in  a  rock's  cleft  from 
which  the  prophet  could  not  see  Jehovah's 
face  but  could  see  his  back.^  He  was  a  god 
of  battle  and  the  name  of  an  old  book  about 
him  still  remains  to  us,  "  The  book  of  the 
Wars  of  Jehovah."  ^ 

"Jehovah  is  a  man  of  war: 
Jehovah  is  his  name  "* — 

so  his  people  at  first  rejoiced  in  him  and 
gloried  in  his  power  when  he  thundered  and 
lightened  on  Sinai.  Few  stories  in  man's 
spiritual  history  are   so  interesting  as  the 

lExodus  6 :3 ;  Chap.  19.    ^Exodus  33  '22-23. 
SNumbers  21:14.     4Exodus  15:3. 


146     CHRISTIANITY  AND  PROGRESS 

record  of  the  way  in  which  this  mountain- 
god,  for  the  first  time,  so  far  as  we  know,  in 
Semitic  history,  left  his  settled  shrine,  trav- 
eled with  his  people  in  the  holy  Ark,  became 
acclimated  in  Canaan,  and,  gradually  ab- 
sorbing the  functions  of  the  old  baals  of  the 
land,  extended  his  sovereignty  over  the 
whole  of  Palestine. 

To  be  sure,  even  then  he  still  was  thought 
of,  as  all  ancient  gods  were  thought  of,  as 
geographically  limited  to  the  country  whose 
god  he  was.  Milcolm  and  Chemosh  were 
real  gods  too,  ruling  in  Philistia  and  Moab 
as  Jehovah  did  in  Canaan.  This  is  the 
meaning  of  Jephthah's  protest  to  a  hostile 
chieftain:  "Wilt  not  thou  possess  that 
which  Chemosh  thy  god  giveth  thee  to 
possess?  "  ^  This  is  the  meaning  of  David's 
protest  when  he  is  driven  out  to  the  Phi- 
listine cities :  "  They  have  driven  me  out  this 
day  that  I  should  not  cleave  unto  the  in- 
heritance of  Jehovah,  saying.  Go,  serve 
other  gods."  ^  This  is  the  meaning  of 
Naaman's  desire  to  have  two  mules'  burden 
of  Jehovah's  land  on  which  to  worship 
Jehovah  in  Damascus.^  Jehovah  could  be 
worshiped  only  on  Jehovah's  land.  But 
ever    as    the    day    of    fuller    understanding 

ijudges  11:24.    21  Samuel  26:19.    ^n  Kings  5:17. 


PROGRESSIVE  CHRISTIANITY      147 

dawned,  the  sovereignty  of  Jehovah  wid- 
ened and  his  power  usurped  the  place  and 
function  of  all  other  gods.  Amos  saw  him 
using  the  nations  as  his  pawns;  Isaiah 
heard  him  whistling  to  the  nations  as  a 
shepherd  to  his  dogs;  Jeremiah  heard  him 
cry,  ''  Can  any  hide  himself  in  secret  places 
so  that  I  shall  not  see  him?  .  .  .  Do  not  I 
fill  heaven  and  earth?  "^;  until  at  last  we 
sweep  out,  through  the  exile  and  all  the 
heightening  of  faith  and  clarifying  of 
thought  that  came  with  it,  into  the  Great 
Isaiah's  40th  chapter  on  the  universal  and 
absolute  sovereignty  of  God,  into  the 
Priestly  narrative  of  creation,  where  God 
makes  all  things  with  a  word,  into  psalms 
which  cry, 

"  For  all  the  gods  of  the  people  are  idols ; 
But  Jehovah  made  the  heavens."  ^ 

Moreover,  as  Jehovah's  sovereignty  thus  is 
enlarged  until  he  is  the  God  of  all  creation, 
his  character  too  is  deepened  and  exalted  in 
the  understanding  of  his  people.  That 
noblest  succession  of  moral  teachers  in 
ancient  history,  the  Hebrew  prophets,  de- 
veloped a  conception  of  the  nature  of  God 
in  terms  of  righteousness,  so  broad  in  its 


ijeremiah  23  :24.    2Psalm  96 :5. 


148     CHRISTIANITY  AND  PROGRESS 

outreach,  so  high  in  its  quality,  that  as  one 
mounts  through  Amos'  fifth  chapter  and 
Isaiah's  first  chapter  and  Jeremiah's  seventh 
chapter,  he  finds  himself,  like  Moses  on 
Nebo's  top,  looking"  over  into  the  Promised 
Land  of  the  New  Testament.  There  this 
development  flowers  out  under  the  influence 
of  Jesus.  God's  righteousness  is  interpreted, 
not  in  terms  of  justice  only,  but  of  compas- 
sionate, sacrificial  love;  his  Fatherhood  em- 
braces not  only  all  mankind  but  each  indi- 
vidual, lifting  him  out  of  obscurity  in  the 
mass  into  infinite  worthfulness  and  hope. 
And  more  than  this  development  of  idea,  the 
New  Testament  gives  us  a  new  picture  of 
God  in  the  personality  of  Jesus,  and  we  see 
the  light  of  the  knov/ledge  of  God's  glory  in 
his  face. 

Moreover,  this  development,  so  plainly 
recorded  in  Scripture,  was  not  uncon- 
sciously achieved  by  the  drift  of  circum- 
stance; it  represents  the  ardent  desire  of 
forward-looking  men,  inspired  by  the  Spirit. 
The  Master,  himself,  was  consciously  plead- 
ing for  a  progressive  movement  in  the  relig- 
ious life  and  thinking  of  his  day.  A  static 
religion  was  the  last  thing  he  ever  dreamed 
of  or  wanted.  No  one  was  more  reverent 
than    he    toward    his    people's    past;    his 


PROGRESSIVE  CHRISTIANITY       149 

thought  and  his  speech  were  saturated  with 
the  beauty  of  his  race's  heritage;  yet  con- 
sider his  words  as  again  and  again  they  fell 
from  his  lips :  "  It  was  said  to  them  of  old 
time  .  .  .  but  I  say  unto  you."  His  life 
was  rooted  in  the  past  but  it  was  not  im- 
prisoned there;  it  grew  up  out  of  the  past, 
not  destroying  but  fulfilling  it.  He  had  in 
him  the  spirit  of  the  prophets,  who  once  had 
spoken  to  his  people  in  words  of  fire;  but 
old  forms  that  he  thought  had  been  out- 
grown he  brushed  aside.  He  would  not 
have  his  Gospel  a  patch  on  an  old  garment, 
he  said,  nor  would  he  put  it  like  new  wine 
into  old  wineskins.  He  appealed  from  the 
oral  traditions  of  the  elders  to  the  written 
law;  within  the  written  law  he  distinguished 
between  ceremonial  and  ethical  elements, 
making  the  former  of  small  or  no  account, 
the  latter  all-important;  and  then  within  the 
written  ethical  law  he  waived  provisions 
that  seemed  to  him  outmoded  by  time. 
Even  when  he  bade  farewell  to  his  dis- 
ciples, he  did  not  talk  to  them  as  if  what  he 
himself  had  said  were  a  finished  system :  "  I 
have  yet  many  things  to  say  unto  you,  but 
ye  cannot  bear  them  now.  Howbeit  when 
he,  the  Spirit  of  truth,  is  come,  he  shall 
guide  you  into  all  the  truth." 


150     CHRISTIANITY  AND  PROGRESS 

In  Paul's  hands  the  work  which  Jesus 
began  went  on.  He  dared  an  adventurous 
move  that  makes  much  of  our  modern  pro- 
gressiveness  look  like  child's  play:  he  lifted 
the  Christian  churches  out  of  the  narrow, 
religious  exclusiveness  of  the  Hebrew  syna- 
gogue. He  dared  to  wage  battle  for  the 
new  idea  that  Christianity  was  not  a  Jewish 
sect  but  a  universal  religion.  He  withstood 
to  his  face  Peter,  still  trammeled  in  the  nar- 
rowness of  his  Jewish  thinking,  and  he 
founded  churches  across  the  Roman  Empire 
where  was  neither  Jew  nor  Greek,  barbarian, 
Scythian,  male  nor  female,  bond  nor  free, 
but  all  were  one  man  in  Christ  Jesus. 

Even  more  thrilling  were  those  later  days 
when  in  Ephesus  the  writer  of  the  Fourth 
Gospel  faced  a  Hellenistic  audience,  to 
whom  the  forms  of  thought  in  which  Jesus 
hitherto  had  been  interpreted  were  utterly 
unreal.  The  first  creed  about  Jesus  pro- 
claimed that  he  was  the  Messiah,  but  Mes- 
siah was  a  Jewish  term  and  to  the  folk  of 
Ephesus  it  had  no  vital  meaning.  John 
could  not  go  on  calling  the  Master  that  and 
that  alone,  when  he  had  hungry  souls  be- 
fore him  who  needed  the  Master  but  to 
whom  Jewish  terms  had  no  significance. 
One  thing  those  folk  of  Ephesus  did  under- 


PROGRESSIVE  CHRISTIANITY      151 

stand,  the  idea  of  the  Logos.  They  had 
heard  of  that  from  the  many  faiths  whose 
pure  or  syncretized  forms  made  the  reHgi- 
ous  background  of  their  time.  They  knew 
about  the  Logos  from  Zoroastrianism, 
where  beside  Ahura  Mazdah  stood  Vohu 
Manah,  the  Mind  of  God;  from  Stoicism, 
at  the  basis  of  whose  philosophy  lay  the 
idea  of  the  Logos;  from  Alexandrian  Hel- 
lenism, by  means  of  which  a  Jew  like  Philo 
had  endeavoured  to  marry  Greek  philosophy 
and  Hebrew  orthodoxy.  And  the  writer  of 
the  Fourth  Gospel  used  that  new  form  of 
thought  in  which  to  present  to  his  people 
the  personality  of  our  Lord.  ''  In  the  be- 
ginning was  the  Logos,  and  the  Logos  was 
with  God,  and  the  Logos  was  God  " — so  be- 
gins the  Fourth  Gospel's  prologue,  in  words 
that  every  intelligent  person  in  Ephesus 
could  understand  and  was  familiar  with,  and 
that  initial  sermon  in  the  book,  for  it  is 
a  sermon,  not  philosophy,  moves  on  in 
forms  of  thought  which  the  people  knew 
about  and  habitually  used,  until  the  hidden 
purpose  comes  to  light:  "The  Logos  be- 
came flesh  and  dwelt  among  us  (and  we 
beheld  his  glory,  glory  as  of  the  only  be- 
gotten from  the  Father),  full  of  grace  and 
truth."     John  was  presenting  his  Lord  to 


152     CHRISTIANITY  AND  PROGRESS 

the   people   of  his   time   in   terms   that  the 
people  could  understand. 

Even  within  the  New  Testament,  there- 
fore, there  is  no  static  creed.  For,  like  a 
flowing  river,  the  Church's  thought  of  her 
Lord  shaped  itself  to  the  intellectual  banks 
of  the  generation  through  which  it  moved, 
even  while,  by  its  construction  and  erosion, 
it  transfigured  them.  Nor  did  this  move- 
ment cease  with  New  Testament  days. 
From  the  Johannine  idea  of  the  Logos  to 
the  Nicene  Creed,  where  our  Lord  is  set  in 
the  framework  of  Greek  metaphysics,  the 
development  is  just  as  clear  as  from  the 
category  of  Jewish  Messiah  to  the  cate- 
gories of  the  Fourth  Gospel.  And  if,  in 
our  generation,  a  conservative  scholar  like 
the  late  Dr.  Sanday  pleaded  for  the  necessity 
of  a  new  Christology,  it  was  not  because  he 
was  primarily  zealous  for  a  novel  philoso- 
phy, but  because  like  John  of  old  in  Ephesus 
he  was  zealous  to  present  Christ  to  his  own 
generation  in  terms  that  his  own  generation 
could  comprehend/ 

IV 
Undoubtedly   such  an  outlook  upon  the 
fluid  nature  of  the  Christian  movement  will 


iWilliam  Sanday:  Christologies  Ancient  and  Modern. 


PROGRESSIVE  CHRISTIANITY      153 

demand  readjustment  in  the  religious  think- 
ing of  many  people.  They  miss  the  old 
ideas  about  revelation.  This  new  progres- 
siveness  seems  to  them  to  be  merely  the 
story  of  man's  discovery,  finding  God,  here 
a  little  and  there  a  little,  as  he  has  found 
the  truths  of  astronomy.  But  God's  revela- 
tion of  himself  is  just  as  real  w^hen  it  is  con- 
ceived in  progressive  as  when  it  is  con- 
ceived in  static  terms.  Men  once  thought 
of  God's  creation  of  the  world  in  terms  of 
fiat — it  was  done  on  the  instant;  and  when 
evolution  was  propounded  men  cried  that 
the  progressive  method  shut  God  out.  We 
see  now  how  false  that  fear  was.  The 
creative  activity  of  God  never  was  so  nobly 
conceived  as  it  has  been  since  we  have 
known  the  story  of  his  slow  unfolding  of  the 
universe.  We  have  a  grander  picture  in  our 
minds  than  even  the  psalmist  had,  when  we 
say  after  him,  "  The  heavens  declare  the 
glory  of  God."  So  men  who  have  been  ac- 
customed to  think  of  revelation  in  static 
terms,  now  that  the  long  leisureliness  of 
man's  developing  spiritual  insight  is  appar- 
ent, fear  that  this  does  away  with  revelation. 
But  in  God's  unfolding  education  of  his 
people  recorded  in  the  Scriptures  revelation 
is  at  its  noblest.     No  man  ever  found  God 


154     CHRISTIANITY  AND  PROGRESS 

except  when  God  was  seeking  to  be  found. 
Discovery  is  the  under  side  of  the  process; 
the  upper  side  is  revelation. 

Indeed,  this  conception  of  progressive 
revelation  does  not  shut  out  finality.  In 
scientific  thought,  which  continually  moves 
and  grows,,  expands  and  changes,  truths 
are  discovered  once  for  all.  The  work  of 
Copernicus  is  in  a  real  sense  final.  This 
earth  does  move;  it  is  not  stationary;  and 
the  universe  is  not  geocentric.  That  dis- 
covery is  final.  Man}^  developments  start 
from  that,  but  the  truth  itself  is  settled  once 
for  all.  So,  in  the  spiritual  history  of  man, 
final  revelations  come.  They  will  not  have 
to  be  made  over  again  and  they  will  not 
have  to  be  given  up.  Progress  does  not 
shut  out  finality;  it  only  makes  each  new 
finality  a  point  of  departure  for  a  new  ad- 
venture, not  a  terminus  ad  quem  for  a  con- 
clusive stop.  That  God  was  in  Christ  rec- 
onciling the  world  unto  himself  is  for  the 
Christian  a  finality,  but,  from  the  day  the 
first  disciples  saw  its  truth  until  now%  the 
intellectual  formulations  in  which  it  has 
been  set  and  the  mental  categories  by  which 
it  has  been  interpreted  have  changed  with 
the  changes  of  each  age's  thought. 

While  at  first,  then,  a  progressive  Chris- 


PROGRESSIVE  CHRISTIANITY      155 

tianity  may  seem  to  plunge  us  into  unset- 
tlement,  the  more  one  studies  it  the  less  he 
would  wish  it  otherwise.  Who  would  ac- 
cept a  snapshot  taken  at  any  point  on  the 
road  of  Christian  development  as  the  final 
and  perfect  form  of  Christianity?  Robert 
Louis  Stevenson  has  drawn  for  us  a  picture 
of  a  man  trying  with  cords  and  pegs  to 
stake  out  the  shadow  of  an  oak  tree,  ex- 
pecting that  when  he  had  marked  its 
boundaries  the  shadow  would  stay  within 
the  limits  of  the  pegs.  Yet  all  the  while  the 
mighty  globe  was  turning  around  in  space. 
He  could  not  keep  a  tree's  shadow  static  on 
a  moving  earth.  Nevertheless,  multitudes 
of  people  in  their  endeavour  to  build  up  an 
infallibly  settled  creed  have  tried  just  such 
a  hopeless  task.  They  forget  that  while  a 
revelation  from  God  might  conceivably  be 
final  and  complete,  religion  deals  with  a 
revelation  of  God.  God,  the  infinite  and 
eternal,  from  everlasting  to  everlasting,  the 
source  and  crown  and  destiny  of  all  the  uni- 
verse— shall  a  man  whose  days  are  as  grass 
rise  up  to  say  that  he  has  made  a  statement 
about  him  which  will  not  need  to  be  revised? 
Rather,  our  prayer  should  be  that  the 
thought  of  God,  the  meaning  of  God,  the 
glory  of  God,  the  plans  and  purpose  of  God 


156     CHRISTIANITY  AND  PROGRESS 

may  expand  in  our  comprehension  until  we, 
who  now  see  in  a  mirror,  darkly,  may  see 
face  to  face.  "  Le  Dieu  defini  est  le  Dieu 
fini." 

This  mistaken  endeavour,  in  the  interest 
of  stability,  to  make  a  vital  movement  static 
is  not  confined  to  religion.  Those  of  us 
who  love  Wagner  remember  the  lesson  of 
Die  Meistersinger.  Down  in  Nuremberg 
they  had  standardized  and  conventionalized 
music.  They  had  set  it  down  in  rules  and 
men  like  Beckmesser  could  not  imagine  that 
there  was  any  music  permissible  outside  the 
regulations.  Then  came  Walter  von  Stol- 
zing.  Music  to  him  was  not  a  convention- 
ality but  a  passion — not  a  rule,  but  a  life — 
and,  when  he  sang,  his  melodies  reached 
heights  of  beauty  that  Beckmesser's  rules 
did  not  provide  for.  It  was  Walter  von  Stol- 
zing  who  sang  the  Prize  Song,  and  as  the 
hearts  of  the  people  were  stirred  in  answer 
to  its  spontaneous  melody,  until  all  the  pop- 
ulation of  Nuremberg  w^ere  singing  its  ac- 
cumulating harmonies,  poor  Beckmesser  on 
his  blackboard  jotted  down  the  rules  which 
were  being  broken.  Beckmesser  represents 
a  static  conception  of  life  which  endeavours 
to  freeze  progress  at  a  given  point  and  call  it 
infallible.     But  Beckmesser  is  wrong.    You 


PROGRESSIVE  CHRISTIANITY      157 

cannot  take  things  like  music  and  religion 
and  set  them  down  in  final  rules  and  regula- 
tions. They  are  life,  and  you  have  to  let 
them  grow  and  flower  and  expand  and  re- 
veal evermore  the  latent  splendour  at  their 
heart. 

V 

Obviously,  the  point  where  this  progres- 
sive conception  of  Christianity  comes  into 
conflict  with  many  widely  accepted  ideas  is 
the  abandonment  which  it  involves  of  an  ex- 
ternal and  inerrant  authority  in  matters  of 
religion.  The  marvel  is  that  that  idea  of 
authority,  which  is  one  of  the  historic  curses 
of  religion,  should  be  regarded  by  so  many 
as  one  of  the  vital  necessities  of  the  faith. 
The  fact  is  that  religion  by  its  very  nature  is 
one  of  the  realms  to  which  external  author- 
ity is  least  applicable.  In  science  people 
commonly  suppose  that  they  do  not  take 
truth  on  any  one's  authority;  they  prove  it. 
In  business  they  do  not  accept  methods  on 
authority;  they  work  them  out.  In  states- 
manship they  no  longer  believe  in  the  divine 
right  of  kings  nor  do  they  accept  infallible 
dicta  handed  down  from  above.  But  they 
think  that  religion  is  delivered  to  them  by 
authority  and  that  they  believe  what  they 


158     CHRISTIANITY  AND  PROGRESS 

do  believe   because   a  divine   Church  or   a 
divine  Book  or  a  divine  Man  told  them. 

In  this  common  mode  of  thinking,  popular 
ideas  have  the  truth  turned  upside  dow^n. 
The  fact  is  that  science,  not  religion,  is  the 
realm  where  most  of  all  we  use  external 
authority.  They  tell  us  that  there  are  mil- 
lions of  solar  systems  scattered  through  the 
fields  of  space.  Is  that  true?  How  do  we 
know?  We  never  counted  them.  We  know 
only  what  the  authorities  say.  They  tell  us 
that  the  next  great  problem  in  science  is 
breaking  up  the  atom  to  discover  the  incal- 
culable resources  of  power  there  waiting  to 
be  harnessed  by  our  skill.  Is  that  true? 
Most  of  us  do  not  understand  what  an  atom 
is,  and  what  it  means  to  break  one  up  passes 
the  farthest  reach  of  our  imaginations;  all 
we  know  is  what  the  authorities  say.  They 
tell  us  that  electricity  is  a  mode  of  motion 
in  ether.  Is  that  true?  Most  of  us  have  no 
first  hand  knowledge  about  electricity.  The 
motorman  calls  it  "  juice  "  and  that  means 
as  much  to  us  as  to  call  it  a  mode  of  motion 
in  ether;  we  must  rely  on  the  authorities. 
They  tell  us  that  sometime  we  are  going  to 
talk  through  wireless  telephones  across 
thousands  of  miles,  so  that  no  man  need  ever 
be  out  of  vocal  communication  with  his  fam- 


PROGRESSIVE  CHRISTIANITY      159 

ily  and  friends.  Is  that  true?  It  seems  to 
us  an  incredible  miracle,  but  we  suppose  that 
it  is  so,  as  the  authorities  say.  In  a  word, 
the  idea  that  we  do  not  use  authority  in 
science  is  absurd.  Science  is  precisely  the 
place  where  nine  hundred  and  ninety-nine 
men  out  of  a  thousand  use  authority  the 
most.  The  chemistry,  biology,  geology, 
astronomy  which  the  authorities  teach  is  the 
only  science  which  most  of  us  possess. 

There  is  another  realm,  however,  where 
we  never  think  of  taking  such  an  attitude. 
They  tell  us  that  friendship  is  beautiful.  Is 
that  true?  Would  we  ever  think  of  saying 
that  we  do  not  know,  ourselves,  but  that 
we  rely  on  the  authorities?  Far  better  to 
say  that  our  experience  with  friendship  has 
been  unhappy  and  that  we  personally  ques- 
tion its  utility!  That,  at  least,  would  have 
an  accent  of  personal,  original  experience  in 
it.  For  here  we  are  facing  a  realm  where 
we  never  can  enter  at  all  until  we  enter, 
each  man  for  himself. 

Two  realms  exist,  therefore,  in  each  of 
which  first-hand  experience  is  desirable,  but 
in  only  one  of  which  it  is  absolutely  in- 
dispensable. We  can  live  on  what  the 
authorities  in  physics  say,  but  there  are  no 
proxies  for  the  soul.     Love,  friendship,  de- 


160    CHRISTIANITY  AND  PROGRESS 

light  in  music  and  in  nature,  parental  affec- 
tion-ythese  things  are  like  eating  and 
breathing;  no  one  can  do  them  for  us;  we 
must  enter  the  experience  for  ourselves. 
Religion,  too,  belongs  in  this  last  realm. 
The  one  vital  thing  in  religion  is  first-hand, 
personal  experience.  Religion  is  the  most 
intimate,  inward,  incommunicable  fellow- 
ship of  the  human  soul.  In  the  words  of 
Plotinus,  religion  is  "  the  flight  of  the  alone 
to  the  Alone."  You  never  know  God  at  all 
until  you  know  him  for  yourself.  The  only 
God  you  ever  will  know  is  the  God  you  do 
know  for  yourself. 

This  does  not  mean,  of  course,  that  there 
are  no  authorities  in  religion.  There  are 
authorities  in  everything,  but  the  function 
of  an  authority  in  religion,  as  in  every  other 
vital  realm,  is  not  to  take  the  place  of  our 
eyes,  seeing  in  our  stead  and  inerrantly  de- 
claring to  us  what  it  sees;  the  function  of 
an  authority  is  to  bring  to  us  the  insight 
of  the  world's  accumulated  wisdom  and  the 
revelations  of  God's  seers,  and  so  to  open 
our  eyes  that  we  may  see,  each  man  for 
himself.  So  an  authority  in  literature  does 
not  say  to  his  students:  The  Merchant  of 
Venice  is  a  great  drama;  you  may  accept 
my  judgment  on  that — I  know.     Upon  the 


PROGRESSIVE  CHRISTIANITY       161 

contrary,  he  opens  their  eyes;  he  makes 
them  see;  he  makes  their  hearts  sensitive 
so  that  the  genius  which  made  Shy  lock  and 
Portia  Hve  captivates  and  subdues  them,  un- 
til like  the  Samaritans  they  say,  "  Now  we 
believe,  not  because  of  thy  speaking:  for 
we  have  heard  for  ourselves,  and  know." 
That  is  the  only  use  of  authority  in  a  vital, 
realm.  It  can  lead  us  up  to  the  threshold 
of  a  great  experience  where  we  must  enter, 
each  man  for  himself,  and  that  service  to  the 
spiritual-life  is  the  Bible's  inestimable  gift. 
At  the  beginning,  Christianity  was  just 
such  a  first-hand  experience  as  we  have  de- 
scribed. The  Christian  fellowship  consisted 
of  a  group  of  men  keeping  company  with 
Jesus  and  learning  how  to  live.  They  had 
no  creeds  to  recite  when  they  met  together ; 
what  they  believed  was  still  an  unstereo- 
typed  passion  in  their  hearts.  They  had  no 
sacraments  to  distinguish  their  faith — bap- 
tism had  been  a  Jewish  rite  and  even  the 
Lord's  Supper  w^as  an  informal  use  of  bread 
and  wine,  the  common  elements  of  their 
daily  meal.  They  had  no  organizations  to 
join;  they  never  dreamed  that  the  Christian 
Gospel  would  build  a  church  outside  the 
synagogue.  Christianity  in  the  beginning 
was  an  intensely  personal  experience. 


162     CHRISTIANITY  AND  PROGRESS 

Then  the  Master  went  away  and  the  tre- 
mendous forces  of  human  life  and  history- 
laid  hold  on  the  movement  which  so  vitally 
he  had  begun.  His  followers  began  build- 
ing churches.  Just  as  the  Wesleyans  had  to 
leave  the  Church  of  England,  not  because 
they  wanted  to,  but  because  the  Anglicans 
would  not  keep  them,  so  the  Christians,  not 
because  they  planned  to,  but  because  the 
synagogue  was  not  large  enough  to  hold 
them,  had  to  leave  the  synagogue.  They 
began  building  creeds ;  they  had  to.  Every 
one  of  the  first  Christian  creeds  was  written 
in  sheer  self-defense.  If  we  had  been  Chris- 
tians in  those  first  centuries,  when  a  power- 
ful movement  was  under  way  called  Gnosti- 
cism, which  denied  that  God,  the  Father  Al- 
mighty, had  made  both  the  heaven  and  the 
earth,  which  said  that  God  had  made  heaven 
indeed  but  that  a  demigod  had  made  the 
world,  and  which  denied  that  Jesus  had  been 
born  in  the  flesh  and  in  the  flesh  had  died, 
we  would  have  done  what  the  first  Chris- 
tians did;  we  would  have  defined  in  a  creed 
what  it  was  the  Christians  did  believe  as 
against  that  wild  conglomeration  of  Ori- 
ental mythology  that  Gnosticism  was,  and 
we  would  have  shouted  the  creed  as  a  war 
cry  against  the  Gnostics.     That  is  what  the 


PROGRESSIVE  CHRISTIANITY      163 

so-called  Apostles'  Creed  was — the  first 
Christian  battle  chant,  a  militant  proclama- 
tion of  the  historic  faith  against  the  heretics ; 
and  every  one  of  its  declarations  met  with  a 
head-on  collision  some  claim  of  Gnosticism. 
Then,  too,  the  early  Christians  drew  up 
rituals;  they  had  to.  We  cannot  keep  any 
spiritual  thing  in  human  Hfe,  even  the  spirit 
of  courtesy,  as  a  disembodied  wraith.  We 
ritualize  it — we  bow,  we  take  off  our  hats, 
we  shake  hands,  we  rise  when  a  lady 
enters.  We  have  innumerable  ways  of  ex- 
pressing poHteness  in  a  ritual.  Neither 
could  they  have  kept  so  deep  and  beautiful 
a  thing  as  the  Christian  life  without  such 
expression. 

So  historic  Christianity  grew,  organized, 
creedalized,  ritualized.  And  ever  as  it  grew, 
a  peril  grew  with  it,  for  there  were  multi- 
tudes of  people  who  joined  these  organiza- 
tions, recited  these  creeds,  observed  these 
rituals,  took  all  the  secondary  and  derived 
elements  of  Christianity,  but  often  forgot 
that  vital  thing  which  all  this  was  meant  in 
the  first  place  to  express:  a  first-hand,  per- 
sonal experience  of  God  in  Christ.  That 
alone  is  vital  in  Christianity;  all  the  rest  is 
once  or  twice  or  thrice  removed  from  life. 
For  Christianity  is  not  a  creed,  nor  an  or- 


164.     CHRISTIANITY  AND  PROGRESS 

ganization,  nor  a  ritual.  These  are  im- 
portant but  they  are  secondary.  They  are 
the  leaves,  not  the  roots;  they  are  the 
wires,  not  the  message.  Christianity  itself 
is  a  life. 

If,  however,  Christianity  is  thus  a  life,  we 
cannot  stereotype  its  expressions  in  set  and 
final  forms.  If  it  is  a  life  in  fellowship  with 
the  living  God,  it  will  think  new  thoughts, 
build  new  organizations,  expand  into  new 
symbolic  expressions.  We  cannot  at  any 
given  time  write  ''  finis  "  after  its  develop- 
ment. We  can  no  more  "  keep  the  faith  " 
by  stopping  its  growth  than  we  can  keep  a 
son  by  insisting  on  his  being  forever  a  child. 
The  progressiveness  of  Christianity  is  not 
simply  its  response  to  a  progressive  age;  the 
progressiveness  of  Christianity  springs  from 
its  own  inherent  vitality.  So  far  is  this  from 
being  regrettable,  that  a  modern  Christian 
rejoices  in  it  and  gladly  recognizes  not  only 
that  he  is  thinking  thoughts  and  undertaking 
enterprises  which  his  fathers  would  not  have 
understood,  but  also  that  his  children  after 
him  will  differ  quite  as  much  in  teaching  and 
practice  from  the  modernity  of  to-day.  It 
has  been  the  fashion  to  regard  this  change- 
ableness  with  wistful  regret.  So  Words- 
worth sings  in  his  sonnet  on  Mutability: 


PROGRESSIVE  CHRISTIANITY      165 

"  Truth  fails  not ;  but  her  outward  forms  that 
bear 
The  longest  date  do  melt  like  frosty  rime, 
That  in  the  morning  whitened  hill  and  plain 
And  is  no  more ;  drop  like  the  tower  sublime 
Of  yesterday,  which  royally  did  wear 
Its  crown  of  weeds,  but  could  not  even  sus- 
tain 
Some  casual  shout  that  broke  the  silent  air. 
Or  the  unimaginable  touch  of  Time." 

Such  wistfulness,  however,  while  a  natural 
sentiment,  is  not  true  to  the  best  Christian 
thought  of  our  day.  He  who  believes  in  the 
living  God,  while  he  will  be  far  from  calling 
all  change  progress,  and  while  he  will,  ac- 
cording to  his  judgment,  withstand  per- 
verse changes  with  all  his  might,  will  also 
regard  the  cessation  of  change  as  the  great- 
est calamity  that  could  befall  religion.  Stag- 
nation in  thought  or  enterprise  means  death 
for  Christianity  as  certainly  as  it  does  for 
any  other  vital  movement.  Stagnation,  not 
change,  is  Christianity's  most  deadly  enemy, 
for  this  is  a  progressive  world,  and  in  a  pro- 
gressive world  no  doom  is  more  certain  than 
that  which  awaits  whatever  is  belated, 
obscurantist  and  reactionary. 


LECTURE  V 

THE  PERILS  OF  PROGRESS 

I 

IN  the  history  of  human  thought  and 
social  organization  there  is  an  interest- 
ing pendular  swing  between  conflicting 
ideas  so  that,  about  the  time  we  wake  up  to 
recognize  that  thought  is  swinging  one  way, 
we  may  be  fairly  sure  that  soon  it  will  be 
swinging  the  other.  Man's  social  organiza- 
tion, for  example,  has  moved  back  and  forth 
between  the  two  poles  of  individual  liberty 
and  social  solidarity.  To  pick  up  the  swing 
of  that  pendulum  only  in  recent  times,  we 
note  that  out  of  the  social  solidarity  of  the 
feudal  system  man  swung  over  to  the  indi- 
vidual liberty  of  the  free  cities;  then  from 
the  individual  liberty  of  the  free  cities  to  the 
social  solidarity  of  the  absolute  monarchies ; 
then  back  again  into  the  individual  liberty  of 
the  democratic  states.  We  see  that  now  we 
are  clearly  swinging  over  to  some  new  form 
of  social  solidarity,  of  which  tendency  feder- 
alism   and   socialism    are    expressions,    and 

167 


168     CHRISTIANITY  AND  PROGRESS 

doubtless  from  that  we  shall  recoil  toward 
individual  liberty  once  more.  It  is  a  safe 
generalization  that  whenever  human 
thought  shows  some  decided  trend,  a  cor- 
rective movement  is  not  far  away.  How- 
ever enthusiastic  we  may  be,  therefore, 
about  the  idea  of  progress  and  the  positive 
contributions  which  it  can  make  to  our  un- 
derstanding and  mastery  of  life,  we  may  be 
certain  that  there  are  in  it  the  faults  of  its 
qualities.  If  we  take  it  without  salt,  our 
children  will  rise  up,  not  to  applaud  our 
far-seeing  wisdom,  but  to  blame  our  easy- 
going credulity.  We  have  already  seen  that 
the  very  idea  of  progress  sprang  up  in  re- 
cent times  in  consequence  of  a  few^  factors 
which  predisposed  men's  minds  to  social 
hopefulness.  Fortunately,  some  of  these 
factors,  such  as  the  scientific  control  of  life 
through  the  knowledge  of  law,  seem  perma- 
nent, and  we  are  confident  that  the  idea  of 
progress  wnll  have  abiding  meaning  for 
human  thought  and  life.  But  no  study  of 
the  matter  could  be  complete  without  an 
endeavour  to  discern  the  perils  in  this  mod- 
ern mode  of  thought  and  to  guard  ourselves 
against  accepting  as  an  unmixed  blessing 
what  is  certainly,  like  all  things  human,  a 
blend  of  good  and  evil. 


THE  PERILS  OF  PROGRESS         169 

One  peril  involved  in  the  popular  accep- 
tance of  the  idea  of  progress  has  been  the 
creation  of  a  superficial,  ill-considered  op- 
timism v^hich  has  largely  lost  sight  of  the 
terrific  obstacles  in  human  nature  against 
which  any  real  moral  advance  on  earth  must 
win  its  way.  Too  often  we  have  taken  for 
granted  what  a  recent  book  calls  "  a  goal  of 
racial  perfection  and  nobility  the  splendour 
of  which  it  is  be3^ond  our  powers  to  con- 
ceive," and  we  have  dreamed  about  this 
earthly  paradise  like  a  saint  having  visions 
of  heaven  and  counting  it  as  won  already  be- 
cause he  is  predestined  to  obtain  it.  Belief 
in  inevitable  progress  has  thus  acted  as  an 
opiate  on  many  minds,  lulling  them  into  an 
elysium  where  all  things  come  by  wishing 
and  where  human  ignorance  and  folly, 
cruelty  and  selfishness  do  not  impede  the 
peaceful  flowing  of  their  dreams.  In  a 
word,  the  idea  of  progress  has  blanketed  the 
sense  of  sin.  Lord  Morley  spoke  once  of 
"  that  horrid  burden  and  impediment  upon 
the  soul  which  the  Churches  call  Sin,  and 
which,  by  whatever  name  you  call  it,  is  a 
real  catastrophe  in  the  moral  nature  of 
man."  The  modern  age,  busy  with  slick, 
swift  schemes  for  progress,  has  too  largely 
lost  sight  of  that. 


170    CHRISTIANITY  AND  PROGRESS 

Indeed,  at  no  point  do  modern  Christians 
differ  more  sharply  from  their  predecessors 
than  in  the  serious  facing  of  the  problem  of 
sin.  Christians  of  former  times  were  bur- 
dened with  a  heavy  sense  of  their  transgres- 
sions, and  their  primary  interest  in  the 
Gospel  was  its  promised  reestablishment  of 
their  guilty  souls  in  the  fellowship  of  a  holy 
God.  Modern  Christianity,  however,  is  dis- 
tinguished from  all  that  by  a  jaunty  sense 
of  moral  well-being;  when  we  admit  our 
sins  we  do  it  with  complacency  and  cheer- 
fulness; our  religion  is  generally  character- 
ized by  an  easy-going  self-righteousness. 
Bunyan's  Pilgrim  with  his  lamentable  load 
upon  his  back,  crying,  "  What  shall  I  do ! 
.  .  .  I  am  .  .  .  undone  by  reason  of  a  bur- 
den that  lieth  hard  upon  me,"  is  no  fit  sym- 
bol of  a  typically  modern  Christian. 

Doubtless  we  have  cause  to  be  thankful 
for  this  swing  away  from  the  morbid  ex- 
tremes to  which  our  fathers  often  went  in 
their  sense  of  sin.  It  is  hard  to  forgive 
Jonathan  Edwards  when  one  reads  in  his 
famous  Enfield  sermon :  ''  The  God  that 
holds  you  over  the  pit  of  hell,  much  as  one 
holds  a  spider,  or  some  loathsome  insect, 
over  the  fire,  abhors  you,  and  is  dreadfully 
provoked;  .  .  .  you  are  ten  thousand  times 


THE  PERILS  OF  PROGRESS         171 

so  abominable  in  his  eyes,  as  the  most  hate- 
ful and  venomous  serpent  is  in  ours."  Any 
one  who  understands  human  nature  could 
have  told  him  that,  after  such  a  black  ex- 
aggeration of  human  depravity  as  he  and 
his  generation  were  guilty  of,  the  Christian 
movement  was  foredoomed  to  swing  away 
over  to  the  opposite  extreme  of  complacent 
self-righteousness.  Unquestionably  we  have 
made  the  swing.  In  spite  of  the  debacle  of 
the  Great  War,  this  is  one  of  the  most  unre- 
pentant generations  that  ever  walked  the 
earth,  dreaming  still  of  automatic  progress 
toward  an  earthly  paradise. 

Many  factors  have  gone  into  the  making 
of  this  modern  mood  of  self-complacency. 
New  knozdedge  has  helped,  by  which  dis- 
asters, such  as  once  awakened  our  fathers* 
poignant  sense  of  sin,  are  now  attributed  to 
scientific  causes  rather  than  to  human  guilt. 
When  famines  or  pestilences  came,  our 
fathers  thought  them  God's  punishment  for 
sin.  When  earthquakes  shook  the  earth  or 
comets  hung  threateningly  in  the  sky,  our 
fathers  saw  in  them  a  divine  demand  for 
human  penitence.  Such  events,  referred 
now  to  their  scientific  causes,  do  not 
quicken  in  us  a  sense  of  sin.  New  democracy 
also  has  helped  in  this  development  of  self- 


172     CHRISTIANITY  AND  PROGRESS 

complacency.  Under  autocratic  kings  the 
common  people  were  common  people  and 
they  knew  it  well.  Their  dependent  com- 
monality was  enforced  on  them  by  the  con- 
stant pressure  of  their  social  life.  Accus- 
tomed to  call  themselves  miserable  worms 
before  an  earthly  king,  they  had  no  qualms 
about  so  estimating  themselves  before  the 
King  of  Heaven.  Democracy,  however, 
elevates  us  into  self-esteem.  The  genius  of 
democracy  is  to  believe  in  men,  their  worth, 
their  possibilities,  their  capacities  for  self- 
direction.  Once  the  dominant  political 
ideas  depressed  men  into  self-contempt; 
now  they  lift  men  into  self-exaltation.  Nezv 
excuses  for  sin  have  aided  in  creating  our 
mood  of  self-content.  We  know  more  than 
our  fathers  did  about  the  effect  of  heredity 
and  environment  on  character,  and  v/e  see 
more  clearly  that  some  souls  are  not  born 
but  damned  into  the  world.  Criminals,  in 
consequence,  have  come  not  to  be  so  much 
condemned  as  pitied,  their  perversion  of 
character  is  regarded  not  so  much  in  terms 
of  iniquity  as  of  disease,  and  as  we  thus  con- 
done transgression  in  others,  so  in  ourselves 
we  palliate  our  wrong.  We  regard  it  as  the 
unfortunate  but  hardly  blamable  conse- 
quence of  temperament  or  training.     Our 


THE  PERILS  OF  PROGRESS         173 

fathers,  who  thought  that  the  trouble  was 
the  devil  in  them,  used  to  deal  sternly  with 
themselves.  Like  Chinese  Gordon,  fighting 
a  besetting  sin  in  private  prayer,  they  used 
to  come  out  from  their  inward  struggles 
saying,  ''  I  hewed  Agag  in  pieces  before  the 
Lord."  But  we  are  softer  with  ourselves; 
we  find  in  lack  of  eugenics  or  in  cruel  cir- 
cumstance a  good  excuse. 

Undoubtedly,  the  nezi}  theology  has  helped 
to  encourage  this  modern  mood  of  self- 
complacenc)^  Jonathan  Edwards'  Enfield 
sermon  pictured  sinners  held  over  the  blaz- 
ing abyss  of  hell  in  the  hands  of  a  wrathful 
deity  who  at  any  moment  was  likely  to  let 
go,  and  so  terrific  was  that  discourse  in  its 
delivery  that  women  fainted  and  strong  men 
clung  in  agony  to  the  pillars  of  the  church. 
Obviously,  we  do  not  believe  in  that  kind 
of  God  any  more,  and  as  always  in  reaction 
we  swing  to  the  opposite  extreme,  so  in  the 
theology  of  these  recent  years  we  have 
taught  a  very  mild,  benignant  sort  of  deity. 
One  of  our  popular  drinking  songs  sums  up 
this  aspect  of  our  new  theology: 

"  God  is  not  censorious 
When  His  children  have  their  fling." 

Indeed,  the  god  of  the  new  theology  has  not 


174     CHRISTIANITY  AND  PROGRESS 

seemed  to  care  acutely  about  sin;  certainly 
he  has  not  been  warranted  to  punish  heav- 
ily; he  has  been  an  indulgent  parent  and 
when  we  have  sinned,  a  polite  "  Excuse 
me "  has  seemed  more  than  adequate  to 
make  amends.  John  Muir,  the  naturalist, 
was  accustomed  during  earthquake  shocks 
in  California  to  assuage  the  anxieties  of  per- 
turbed Eastern  visitors  by  saying  that  it  was 
only  Mother  Earth  trotting  her  children  on 
her  knee.  Such  poetizing  is  quite  in  the 
style  of  the  new  theology.  Nevertheless, 
the  description,  however  pretty,  is  not  an 
adequate  account  of  a  real  earthquake,  and 
in  this  moral  universe  there  are  real  earth- 
quakes, as  this  generation  above  all  others 
ought  to  know,  when  man's  sin,  his  greed, 
his  selfishness,  his  rapacity  roll  up  across 
the  years  an  accumulating  mass  of  conse- 
quence until  at  last  in  a  mad  collapse  the 
whole  earth  crashes  into  ruin.  The  moral 
order  of  the  world  has  not  been  trotting  us 
on  her  knees  these  recent  years;  the  moral 
order  of  the  world  has  been  dipping  us  in 
hell;  and  because  the  new  theology  had 
not  been  taking  account  of  such  possi- 
bilities, had  never  learned  to  preach  on 
that  text  in  the  New  Testament,  "  It  is  a 
fearful  thing  to  fall  into  the  hands  of  the 


THE  PERILS  OF  PROGRESS         175 

living  God,"  we  were  ill  prepared  for  the 
experience. 

Many  factors  like  those  which  we  have 
named  have  contributed  to  create  our  mod- 
ern negligence  of  the  problem  of  sin,  but 
under  all  of  them  and  permeating  them  has 
been  the  idea  that  automatic  progress  is 
inherent  in  the  universe.  This  evolving 
cosmos  has  been  pictured  as  a  fool-proof 
world  where  men  could  make  and  love  their 
lies,  with  their  souls  dead  and  their  stom- 
achs well  alive,  with  selfish  profit  the 
motive  of  their  economic  order  and  narrow 
nationalism  the  slogan  of  their  patriotism, 
and  where  still,  escaping  the  consequences, 
they  could  live  in  a  progressive  society.  A 
recent  writer  considers  it  possible  that 
"  over  the  crest  of  the  hill  the  Promised 
Land  stretches  away  to  the  far  horizons 
smiling  in  eternal  sunshine."  The  picture 
is  nonsense.  x\ll  the  progress  this  world 
ever  will  know  waits  upon  the  conquest 
of  sin.  Strange  as  it  may  sound  to  the 
ears  of  this  modern  age,  long  tickled  by 
the  amiable  idiocies  of  evolution  popularly 
misinterpreted,  this  generation's  deepest 
need  is  not  these  dithyrambic  songs  about 
inevitable  progress,  but  a  fresh  sense  of  per- 
sonal and  social  sin. 


176     CHRISTIANITY  AND  PROGRESS 

What  the  scientific  doctrine  of  evolution 
really  implies  is  something  much  more 
weighty  and  sinister  than  frothy  optimism. 
When  a  preacher  now  quotes  Paul,  ''  as  in 
Adam  all  die,"  not  many  of  the  younger 
generation  understand  him,  but  when  we 
are  told  that  we  came  out  of  low,  sub- 
human beginnings,  that  we  carry  with  us 
yet  the  bestial  leftovers  of  an  animal  heri- 
tage to  be  fought  against  and  overcome  and 
left  behind,  well-instructed  members  of  this 
generation  ought  to  comprehend.  Yet  in 
saying  that,  we  are  dealing  with  the  same 
fundamental  fact  which  Paul  was  facing 
when  he  said,  ''  as  in  Adam  all  die  " ;  we  are 
handling  the  same  unescapable  experience 
out  of  which  the  old  doctrine  of  original  sin 
first  came;  we  are  facing  a  truth  which  it 
will  not  pay  us  to  forget:  that  humanity's 
sinful  nature  is  not  something  which  you 
and  I  alone  make  up  by  individual  deeds  of 
wrong,  but  that  it  is  an  inherited  mortgage 
and  handicap  on  the  whole  human  family. 
Why  is  it  that  if  we  let  a  field  run  wild  it 
goes  to  weeds,  while  if  we  wish  wheat  we 
must  fight  for  every  grain  of  it  ?  Why  is  it 
that  if  we  let  human  nature  run  loose  it 
goes  to  evil,  while  he  who  would  be  vir- 
tuous must  struggle  to  achieve  character? 


THE  PERILS  OF  PROGRESS         177 

It  is  because,  in  spite  of  our  optimisms 
and  evasions,  that  fact  still  is  here,  which 
our  fathers  often  appraised  more  truly 
than  we,  that  human  nature,  with  all  its 
magnificent  possibilities,  is  like  the  earth's 
soil  filled  with  age-long  seeds  and  roots 
of  evil  growth,  and  that  progress  in  good- 
ness, whether  personal  or  social,  must 
be  achieved  by  grace  of  some  power 
which  can  give  us  the  victory  over  our  evil 
nature. 

In  past  generations  it  was  the  preachers 
who  talked  most  about  sin  and  thundered 
against  it  from  their  pulpits,  but  now  for 
years  they  have  been  very  reticent  about  it. 
Others,  however,  have  not  been  still.  Scien- 
tists have  made  us  feel  the  ancient  heritage 
that  must  be  fought  against;  novelists  have 
written  no  great  novel  that  does  not  swirl 
around  some  central  sin;  the  work  of  the 
dramatists  from  Shakespeare  until  Ibsen  is 
centrally  concerned  with  the  problem  of 
human  evil;  and  now  the  psycho-analysts 
are  digging  down  into  the  unremembered 
thoughts  of  men  to  bring  up  into  the  light 
of  day  the  origins  of  our  spiritual  miseries 
in  frustrated  and  suppressed  desire.  We  do 
not  need  artificially  to  conjure  up  a  sense 
of  sin.     All  we  need  to  do  is  to  open  our 


178     CHRISTIANITY  AND  PROGRESS 

eyes  to  facts.  Take  one  swift  glance  at  the 
social  state  of  the  world  to-day.  Consider 
our  desperate  endeavours  to  save  this 
rocking  civilization  from  the  consequences 
of  the  blow  just  delivered  it  by  men's 
iniquities.  That  should  be  sufficient  to 
indicate  that  this  is  no  fool-proof  uni- 
verse automatically  progressive,  but  that 
moral  evil  is  still  the  central  problem  of 
mankind. 

One  would  almost  say  that  the  first  rule 
for  all  who  believe  in  a  progressive  world  is 
not  to  believe  in  it  too  much.  Long  ago 
Plato  said  that  he  drove  two  horses,  one 
white  and  tractable,  the  other  black  and 
fractious;  Jesus  said  that  two  masters 
sought  man's  allegiance,  one  God,  the  other 
mammon;  Paul  said  that  his  soul  was  the 
battle-ground  of  two  forces,  one  of  which  he 
called  spirit  and  the  other  flesh;  and  only 
the  other  day  one  of  our  own  number  told 
of  the  same  struggle  between  two  men  in 
each  of  us,  one  Dr.  Jekyll,  the  other  Mr. 
Hyde.  That  conflict  still  is  pivotal  in  human 
history.  The  idea  of  progress  can  defeat 
itself  no  more  surely  than  by  getting  itself 
so  believed  that  men  expect  automatic  social 
advance  apart  from  the  conquest  of  personal 
and  social  sin. 


THE  PERILS  OF  PROGRESS         179 
II 

Another  result  of  our  superficial  confi- 
dence in  the  idea  of  progress  is  reliance 
upon  social  palliatives  instead  of  radical 
cures  for  our  public  maladies.  We  are  so 
predisposed  to  think  that  the  world  inher- 
ently wants  to  be  better,  is  inwardly  strain- 
ing to  be  better,  that  we  are  easily  fooled 
into  supposing  that  some  slight  easement  of 
external  circumstance  will  at  once  release 
the  progressive  forces  of  mankind  and  save 
the  race.  When,  for  example,  one  compares 
the  immense  amount  of  optimistic  expec- 
tancy about  a  warless  world  with  the  small 
amount  of  radical  thinking  as  to  what  really 
is  the  matter  with  us,  he  m.ay  well  be 
amazed  at  the  unfounded  regnancy  of  the 
idea  of  progress.  We  rejoice  over  some 
slight  disarmament  as  though  that  were  the 
cure  of  our  international  shame,  whereas 
always  one  can  better  trust  a  real  Quaker 
with  a  gun  than  a  thug  without  one.  So 
the  needs  of  our  international  situation,  in- 
volving external  disarmament,  to  be  sure, 
involve  also  regenerations  of  thought  and 
spirit  much  more  radical  than  any  rear- 
rangement of  outward  circumstance.  To 
forget  that  is  to  lose  the  possibility  of  real 
progress;  and  insight  into  these  deep-seated 


180     CHRISTIANITY  AND  PROGRESS 

needs  is  often  dimmed  by  our  too  amiable 
and  innocent  belief  in  automatic  social  ad- 
vance waiting  to  take  place  on  the  slightest 
excuse. 

To  take  but  a  single  illustration  of  a 
radical  change  in  men's  thinking,  difficult  to 
achieve  and  yet  indispensable  to  a  decent 
Mrorld,  consider  the  group  of  prejudices  and 
passions  which  center  about  nationalism  and 
which  impede  the  real  progress  of  interna- 
tional fraternity.  What  if  all  Christians 
took  Jesus  in  earnest  in  his  attitude  that 
only  one  object  on  earth  is  Vv^orthy  of  the 
absolute  devotion  of  a  man — the  will  of 
God  for  all  mankind — and  that  therefore 
no  nationality  nor  patriotism  whatsoever 
should  be  the  highest  object  of  man's  loy- 
alty? That  ought  to  be  an  axiom  to  us,  who 
stood  with  the  Allies  against  Germany. 
Certainly,  we  condemned  Germany  roundly 
enough  because  so  many  of  her  teachers 
exalted  the  state  as  an  object  of  absolute 
loyalty.  When  in  Japan  one  sees  certain 
classes  of  people  regarding  the  Mikado  as 
divine  and  rating  loyalty  to  him  as  their 
highest  duty,  it  is  easy  to  condemn  that. 
When,  however,  a  man  says  in  plain  En- 
glish :  I  am  an  American  but  I  am  a  Chris- 
tian first  and  I  am  an  American  only  in  the 


THE  PERILS  OF  PROGRESS         181 

sense  in  which  I  can  be  an  American,  being 
first  of  all  a  Christian,  and  my  loyalty  to 
America  does  not  begin  to  compare  with  my 
superior  loyalty  to  God's  will  for  all  man- 
kind and,  if  ever  national  action  makes  these 
two  things  conflict,  I  must  choose  God  and 
not  America — to  the  ears  of  many  that  plain 
statement  has  a  tang  of  newness  and  dan- 
ger. In  the  background  of  even  Christian 
minds,  Jesus  to  the  contrary  notwithstand- 
ing, one  finds  the  tacit  assumption,  counted 
almost  too  sacred  to  be  examined,  that  of 
course  a  man's  first  loyalty  is  to  his  nation. 

Indeed,  we  Protestants  ought  to  feel  a 
special  responsibility  for  this  nationalism 
that  so  takes  the  place  of  God.  In  medieval 
and  Catholic  Europe  folk  did  not  so  think 
of  nationalism.  Folk  in  medieval  Europe 
were  taught  that  their  highest  obligation 
was  to  God  or,  as  they  would  have  phrased 
it,  to  the  Church;  that  the  Church  could  at 
any  time  dispense  them  from  any  obligation 
to  king  or  nation;  that  the  Church  could 
even  make  the  king,  the  symbol  of  the  na- 
tion, stand  three  days  in  the  snow  outside 
the  Pope's  door  at  Canossa.  Every  boy  and 
girl  in  medieval  Europe  was  taught  that  his 
first  duty  was  spiritual  and  that  no  nation- 
ality  nor   patriotism    could    compare   with 


182     CHRISTIANITY  AND  PROGRESS 

that.  Then  we  Protestants  began  our  bat- 
tle for  spiritual  liberty  against  the  tyranny 
of  Rome,  and  as  one  of  the  most  potent 
agencies  in  the  winning  of  our  battle  we 
helped  to  develop  the  spirit  of  nationality. 
In  place  of  the  Holy  Roman  Church  we  put 
state  churches.  In  place  of  devotion  to  the 
Vatican  we  were  tempted  to  put  devotion 
to  the  nation.  Luther  did  more  than  write 
spiritual  treatises ;  he  sent  out  ringing,  patri- 
otic appeals  to  the  German  nobility  against 
Rome.  It  is  not  an  accident  that  absolute 
nationalism  came  to  its  climacteric  in  Ger- 
many where  Protestantism  began.  For 
Protestantism,  without  ever  intending  it,  as 
an  unexpected  by-product  of  its  fight  for 
spiritual  liberty,  helped  to  break  up  western 
Europe  into  nations,  where  nationalism  ab- 
sorbed the  loyalty  of  the  people.  And  now 
that  little  tiger  cub  we  helped  to  rear  has 
become  a  great  beast  and  its  roaring  shakes 
the  earth. 

A  superficial  confidence  in  automatic 
progress,  therefore,  which  neglects  an  ele- 
mental fact  like  this  at  the  root  of  our  whole 
international  problem  is  futile;  it  leads  no- 
where ;  it  is  rose  water  prescribed  for  lep- 
rosy. The  trouble  with  nationalism  is  pro- 
found and  this  is  the  gist  of  it:  we  may  be 


THE  PERILS  OF  PROGRESS         183 

unselfish  personally,  but  we  group  ourselves 
into  social  units  called  nations,  where  we, 
being  individually  unselfish  with  reference 
to  the  group,  are  satisfied  with  ourselves, 
but  where  all  the  time  the  group  itself  is 
not  unselfish,  but,  it  may  be,  is  aggressively 
and  violently  avaricious.  Yet  to  most  peo- 
ple our  sacrificial  loyalty  to  the  nation 
would  pass  for  virtue,  even  though  the  na- 
tion as  a  whole  were  exploiting  its  neigh- 
bours or  waging  a  useless,  unjust  war.  The 
loyalty  of  Germans  to  Germany  may  be 
rated  as  the  loftiest  goodness  no  matter 
what  Germany  as  a  whole  is  doing,  and  the 
loyalty  of  Americans  to  America  may  be 
praised  as  the  very  passport  to  heaven  while 
America  as  a  whole  may  be  engaged  in  a 
nationally  unworthy  enterprise.  The  fine 
spirit  of  men's  devotion  within  the  limits 
of  the  group  disguises  the  ultimate  self- 
ishness of  the  whole  procedure  and  cloaks 
a  huge  sin  under  a  comparatively  small 
unselfishness. 

We  can  see  that  same  principle  at  work 
in  our  industrial  situation.  We  break  up 
into  two  groups;  we  are  trades  unionists  or 
associated  employers.  We  are  unselfish  so 
far  as  our  group  is  concerned ;  we  make  it  a 
point  of  honour  to  support  our  economic 


184     CHRISTIANITY  AND  PROGRESS 

class;  it  is  part  of  our  code  of  duty  to  be 
loyal  there.  But  while  we  are  thus  unself- 
ish with  reference  to  the  group,  the  group 
itself  is  not  unselfish ;  the  group  itself  is 
fighting  a  bitter  and  selfish  conflict,  ava- 
ricious and  often  cruel.  There  is  no  ulti- 
mate way  out  of  this  situation  which  does 
not  include  the  activity  of  people  who  have 
a  loyalty  that  is  greater  than  their  groups. 
Henry  George  was  once  introduced  at 
Cooper  Institute,  New  York  City,  by  a 
chairman  who,  wishing  to  curry  favour  with 
the  crowd,  called  out  with  a  loud  voice, 
''  Henry  George,  the  friend  of  the  working- 
man."  George  stood  up  and  sternly  began, 
*'  I  am  not  the  friend  of  the  workingman  " ; 
then  after  a  strained  silence,  ''  and  I  am  not 
the  friend  of  the  capitalist";  then  after  an- 
other silence,  "I  am  for  men;  men  simply 
as  men,  regardless  of  any  accidental  or 
superficial  distinctions  of  race,  creed,  col- 
our, class,  or  yet  function  or  employment." 
Until  we  can  get  that  larger  loyalty  into  the 
hearts  of  men,  all  the  committees  on  earth 
cannot  solve  our  industrial  problems. 

Nor  can  anything  else  make  it  possible  to 
solve  our  international  problem.  The  curse 
of  nationalism  is  that,  having  pooled  the  un- 
selfishness of  persons  in  one  group  under 


THE  PERILS  OF  PROGRESS         185 

one  national  name  and  of  persons  in  another 
group  under  another  national  name,  it  uses 
this  beautiful  unselfishness  of  patriotism  to 
carry  out  national  enterprises  that  are  fun- 
damentally selfish.  One  element,  therefore, 
is  indispensable  in  any  solution:  enough 
Christians,  whether  they  call  themselves  by 
that  name  or  not,  who  have  caught  Jesus' 
point  of  view  that  only  one  loyalty  on  earth 
is  absolute — the  will  of  God  for  all  man- 
kind. This  last  summer  I  spent  one  Sunday 
night  in  the  home  of  Mr.  Ozaki,  perhaps 
the  leading  liberal  of  Japan,  a  man  who 
stands  in  danger  of  assassination  any  day 
for  his  international  attitude.  Suddenly  he 
turned  on  me  and  said,  "  If  the  United 
States  should  go  into  a  war  which  you  re- 
garded as  unjust  and  wrong,  what  would 
you  do?  "  I  had  to  answer  him  swiftly  and 
I  had  to  give  him  the  only  answer  that  a 
Christian  minister  could  give  and  keep  his 
self-respect.  I  said,  "  If  the  United  States 
goes  into  a  war  which  I  think  is  unjust  and 
wrong,  I  will  go  into  my  pulpit  the  next 
Sunday  morning  and  in  the  name  of  God 
denounce  that  war  and  take  the  conse- 
quence." Surely,  a  man  does  not  have  to  be 
a  theoretical  pacifist,  which  I  am  not,  to  see 
how    indispensable    that    attitude    is    to    a 


186     CHRISTIANITY  AND  PROGRESS 

Christian.  There  is  hardly  anything  more 
needed  now  in  the  international  situation 
than  a  multitude  of  people  who  will  sit  in 
radical  judgment  on  the  actions  of  their 
governments,  so  that  when  the  govern- 
ments of  the  world  begin  to  talk  war  they 
will  know  that  surely  they  must  face  a  mass 
of  people  rising  up  to  say:  War?  Why  war? 
AVe  are  no  longer  dumb  beasts  to  be  led 
to  the  slaughter;  we  no  longer  think  that 
any  state  on  earth  is  God  Almighty.  If, 
however,  we  are  to  have  that  attitude 
strong  enough  so  that  it  will  stand  the 
strain  of  mob  psychology  and  the  fear  of 
consequences,  it  must  be  founded  deep,  as 
was  Jesus'  attitude :  one  absolute  loyalty  to 
the  will  of  God  for  all  mankind.  So  far 
from  hurting  true  patriotism,  this  attitude 
would  be  the  making  of  patriotism.  It 
would  purge  patriotism  from  all  its  peril, 
would  exalt  it,  purify  it,  make  of  it  a  bless- 
ing, not  a  curse.  But  whatever  be  the 
effect  upon  patriotism,  the  Christian  is  com- 
mitted by  the  Master  to  a  prior  loyalty; 
he  is  a  citizen  of  the  Kingdom  of  God  in 
all  the  earth. 

An  easy-going  belief  in  inherent  and  in- 
evitable progress,  therefore,  is  positively 
perilous   in   the  manifoldly  complex   social 


THE  PERILS  OF  PROGRESS         187 

situation,  from  which  only  the  most  careful 
thinking  and  the  most  courageous  living 
will  ever  rescue  us.  The  Christian  Church 
is  indeed  entrusted,  in  the  message  of  Jesus, 
with  the  basic  principles  of  life  which  the 
world  needs,  but  the  clarity  of  vision  which 
sees  their  meaning  and  the  courage  of  heart 
which  will  apply  them  are  not  easy  to 
achieve.  Some  of  us  have  felt  that  acutely 
these  last  few  years ;  all  of  us  should  have 
learned  that  whatever  progress  is  wrought 
out  upon  this  planet  will  be  sternly  fought 
for  and  hardly  won.  Belief  in  the  idea  of 
progress  does  not  mean  that  this  earth  is 
predestined  to  drift  into  Paradise  like 
thistledown  before  an  inevitable  wind. 


Ill 

A  third  peril  associated  with  the  idea  of 
progress  is  quite  as  widespread  as  the  other 
two  and  in  some  ways  more  insidious.  The 
idea  is  prevalent  that  progress  involves  the 
constant  supersession  of  the  old  by  the  new 
so  that  we,  who  have  appeared  thus  late  in 
human  history  and  are  therefore  the  heirs 
"  of  all  the  ages,  in  the  foremost  files  of 
time,"  may  at  once  assume  our  superiority 
to  the  ancients.     The  modern  man,  living 


188     CHRISTIANITY  AND  PROGRESS 

in  a  world  supposedly  progressing  from 
early  crude  conditions  toward  perfection, 
has  shifted  the  golden  age  from  the  past  to 
the  future,  and  in  so  doing  has  placed  him- 
self in  much  closer  proximity  to  it  than  his 
ancestors  were.  The  world  is  getting  bet- 
ter— such  is  the  common  assumption  which 
is  naturally  associated  with  the  idea  of 
progress.  As  one  enthusiastic  sponsor  of 
this  proposition  puts  it : 

"  Go  back  ten  years,  and  there  was  no  airship ; 
fifteen  years,  and  there  was  no  wireless  telegraphy; 
twenty-five  years,  and  there  was  no  automobile; 
forty  years,  and  there  was  no  telephone,  and  no 
electric  light;  sixty  years,  and  there  was  no  photo- 
graph, and  no  sewing  machine;  seventy-five  years, 
no  telegraph ;  one  hundred  years,  no  railway  and 
no  steamship;  one  hundred  and  twenty-five  years, 
no  steam  engine ;  two  hundred  years,  no  post-office ; 
three  hundred  years,  no  newspaper;  five  hundred 
years,  no  printing  press;  one  thousand  years,  no 
compass,  and  ships  could  not  go  out  of  sight  of  land; 
two  thousand  years,  no  writing  paper,  but  parch- 
ments of  skin  and  tablets  of  wax  and  clay.  Go 
back  far  enough  and  there  were  no  plows,  no  tools, 
no  iron,  no  cloth;  people  ate  acorns  and  roots  and 
lived  in  caves  and  went  naked  or  clothed  them- 
selves in  the  skins  of  wild  beasts."^ 

Such  is  the  picture  of  human  history  upon 


ijames  H.  Snowden :  Is  the  World  Growing  Better? 
pp.  41-42. 


THE  PERILS  OF  PROGRESS         189 

this  planet  which  occupies  the  modern 
mind,  and  one  impHcation  often  drawn  is 
that  we  have  outgrown  the  ancients  and 
that  they  might  well  learn  from  us  and  not 
we  from  them. 

Christians,  however,  center  their  alle- 
giance around  ideas  and  personalities  which 
are,  from  the  modern  standpoint,  very  old 
indeed.  The  truths  that  were  wrought  out 
in  the  developing  life  and  faith  of  the 
Hebrew-Christian  people  are  still  the  regu- 
lative Christian  truths,  and  the  personality 
who  crowned  the  whole  development  is  still 
the  Christians'  Lord.  They  are  challenged, 
however,  to  maintain  this  in  a  progressive 
world.  Men  do  not  think  of  harking  back 
to  ancient  Palestine  nineteen  centuries  ago 
for  their  business  methods,  their  educa- 
tional systems,  their  scientific  opinions,  or 
anything  else  in  ordinary  life  whatever. 
Then  why  go  back  to  ancient  Palestine  for 
the  chief  exemplar  of  the  spiritual  life? 
This  is  a  familiar  modern  question  which 
springs  directly  from  popular  interpreta- 
tions of  progress. 

"  Dim  tracts  of  time  divide 

Those  golden  days  from  me; 
Thy  voice  comes  strange  o'er  years  of  change ; 
How  can  I  follow  Thee? 


190     CHRISTIANITY  AND  PROGRESS 

"  Comes  faint  and  far  Thy  voice 
From  vales  of  Galilee; 
Thy  vision  fades  in  ancient  shades; 
How  should  we  follow  Thee  ?  "  ^ 

Behind  this  familiar  mood  lies  one  of  the 
most  significant  changes  that  has  ever 
passed  over  the  human  mind.  The  medieval 
age  was  tempted  to  look  backward  for  its 
knowledge  of  everything.  Philosophy  was 
to  be  found  in  Aristotle,  science  in  Pliny 
and  his  like.  It  was  the  ancients  who  were 
wise;  it  was  the  ancients  who  had  under- 
stood nature  and  had  known  God.  The 
farther  back  you  went  the  nearer  you  came 
to  the  venerable  and  the  authoritative.  As, 
therefore,  in  every  other  realm  folk  looked 
back  for  knowledge,  so  it  was  most  natural 
that  the}^  should  look  back  for  their  re- 
ligion, too.  To  find  philosophy  in  Aristotle 
and  to  find  spiritual  life  in  Christ  required 
not  even  the  turning  of  the  head.  In  all 
realms  the  age  in  its  search  for  knowledge 
was  facing  backwards.  It  was  a  significant 
hour  in  the  history  of  human  thought  when 
that  attitude  began  to  give  way.  The 
scandal  caused  by  Alessandro  Tassoni's  at- 
tacks on  Homer  and  Aristotle  in  the  early 


iprancis  Turner   Palgrave:   Faith  and  Light   in   the 
Latter  Days. 


THE  PERILS  OF  PROGRESS         191 

seventeenth  century  resounded  through 
Europe.  He  advanced  the  new  and  aston- 
ishing idea  that,  so  far  from  having  degen- 
erated since  ancient  times,  the  race  had 
advanced  and  that  the  moderns  were  better 
than  their  sires.  This  new  idea  prevailed 
as  behef  in  progress  grew.  It  met,  how- 
ever, with  violent  opposition,  and  the  rem- 
nants of  that  old  controversy  are  still  to  be 
found  in  volumes  like  George  Hakewill's 
five  hundred  page  folio  published  in  1627  on 
"  the  common  errour  touching  Nature's 
perpetuall  and  universall  decay."^  But 
from  the  seventeenth  century  on  the  idea 
gained  swift  ascendency  that  the  human 
race,  like  an  individual,  is  growing  up,  that 
humanity  is  becoming  wiser  with  the  years, 
that  we  can  know  more  than  Aristotle  and 
Pliny,  that  we  should  look,  not  back  to  the 
ancients,  but  rather  to  ourselves  and  to  our 
offspring,  for  the  real  wisdom  which  ma- 
turity achieves.  Once  what  was  old  seemed 
wise  and  established ;  what  was  new  seemed 
extempore  and  insecure:  now  what  is  old 
seems  outgrown;  what  is  new  seems  proba- 
ble and  convincing.    Such  is  the  natural  and 

iGeorge  Hakewill:  An  Apologie  of  the  Power  and 
Providence  of  God  in  the  Government  of  the  World,  or 
An  Examination  and  Censure  of  the  Common  Erroujr 
Touching  Natures  Perpetuall  and  Universall  Decay, 


192     CHRISTIANITY  AND  PROGRESS 

prevalent  attitude  in  a  world  where  the  idea 
of  progress  is  in  control.  Nor  can  the  ap- 
plications of  this  idea  to  the  realm  of  relig- 
ion be  evaded.  If  we  would  not  turn  back 
to  Palestine  nineteen  centuries  ago  for  any- 
thing else,  why  should  we  turn  back  to  find 
there  the  Master  of  our  spiritual  life?  In 
a  word,  our  modern  belief  in  progress,  popu- 
larly interpreted,  leads  multitudes  of  people 
to  listen  with  itching  ears  for  every  new 
thing,  while  they  condescend  to  all  that  is 
old  in  religion,  and  in  particular  conclude 
that,  while  Jesus  lived  a  wonderful  life  for 
his  own  day,  that  was  a  long  time  ago  and 
surely  we  must  be  outgrowing  him. 

That  this  attitude  is  critically  perilous  to 
the  integrity  of  the  Christian  movement  will 
at  once  be  obvious  to  any  one  whose  own 
spiritual  experience  is  centered  in  Christ. 
From  the  beginning  until  now  the  faith  of 
Christian  people  has  been  primarily  di- 
rected, not  to  a  set  of  abstract  principles, 
nor  to  a  set  of  creedal  definitions,  but  to  a 
Person.  Christians  Eave  been  people  be- 
lieving in  Jesus  Christ.  This  abiding  ele- 
ment has  put  unity  into  Christian  history. 
The  stream  of  Christian  thought  and  prog- 
ress has  never  been  twice  the  same,  yet  for 
all  that  it  has  been  a  continuous  stream  and 


THE  PERILS  OF  PROGRESS         193 

not  an  aimless,  sprawling  flood,  and  this 
unity  and  consistency  have  existed  for  one 
reason  chiefly:  the  influence  of  the  person- 
ality of  Jesus.  Folk  may  have  been  Roman- 
ists or  Protestants,  ritualists  or  Quakers, 
reactionaries  or  progressives,  but  still  they 
have  believed  in  Jesus.  His  personality  has 
been  the  sun  around  which  even  in  their 
dififerences  they  have  swung  like  planets  in 
varying  orbits.  Take  the  personality  of 
Jesus  out  of  Christian  history  and  what 
you  have  left  is  chaos. 

Moreover,  it  is  the  personality  of  Jesus 
that  has  been  the  source  of  Christianity's 
transforming  influence  on  character.  Ask 
whence  has  come  that  power  over  the 
spirits  of  men  which  we  recognize  as  Chris- 
tianity at  its  mightiest  and  best,  and  the 
origin  must  be  sought,  not  primarily  in  our 
theologies  or  rubrics  or  churches,  but  in 
the  character  and  spirit  of  Jesus.  He  him- 
self is  the  central  productive  source  of 
power  in  Christianity.  We  have  come  so 
to  take  this  for  granted  that  we  do  not 
'half  appreciate  the  wonder  of  it.  This  per- 
sonality, who  so  has  mastered  men,  was 
born  sixty  generations  ago  in  a  small  vil- 
lage in  an  outlying  Roman  province,  and 
until  he  was  thirty  years  of  age  he  lived 


194     CHRISTIANITY  AND  PROGRESS 

and  worked  as  a  carpenter  among  his  fel- 
low townsfolk,  attracting  no  wide  consid- 
eration. Then  for  three  years  or  less  he 
poured  out  his  life  in  courageous  teaching 
and  sacrificial  service,  amid  the  growing 
hatred  and  hostility  of  his  countrymen,  un- 
til he  was  put  to  death  by  crucifixion  "  be- 
cause he  stirred  up  the  people."  Anatole 
France,  in  one  of  his  stories,  represents 
Pilate  in  his  later  years  as  trying  to  remem- 
ber the  trial  and  death  of  Jesus  and  being 
barely  able  to  recall  it.  That  incident  had 
been  so  much  a  part  of  the  day's  work  in 
governing  a  province  like  Judea  that  it  had 
all  but  escaped  his  recollection.  Such  a  rep- 
resentation of  the  case  is  not  improbable.  It 
is  easy  so  to  tell  the  story  of  Jesus'  life  as 
to  make  his  continued  influence  seem  in- 
credible. None  would  have  supposed  that 
nineteen  centuries  after  his  death,  Lecky, 
the  historian  of  European  morals,  would 
say,  *'  The  simple  record  of  three  short 
years  of  active  life  has  done  more  to  regen- 
erate and  to  soften  mankind  than  all  the 
disquisitions  of  philosophers,  and  all  the 
exhortations  of  moralists."  ^  None  would 
have  thought  that  sixty  generations   after 

iW.  E.  H.  Lecky :  History  of  European  Morals  from 
Augustus  to  Charlemagne,  Vol.  II,  p.  9. 


THE  PERILS  OF  PROGRESS         196 

he  was  gone,  Montefiori,  a  Jew,  putting  his 
finger  on  the  source  of  Christianity's  power, 
would  light  upon  the  phrase  "  For  the  sake 
of  Jesus,"  and  would  cry:  "Of  what  fine 
lives  and  deaths  has  not  this  motive  been  the 
spring  and  the  sustainment !  "  ^  None  would 
have  thought  that  so  long  after  Calvary 
seemed  to  end  forever  the  power  of  Jesus, 
one  of  the  race's  greatest  men,  David  Liv- 
ingstone, engaged  in  one  of  the  race's  most 
courageous  enterprises,  breaking  his  way 
into  the  untraveled  jungles  of  Africa,  would 
sing  as  he  went,  for  so  his  journal  says  he 
did, 

"Jesus,   the  very  thought  of   Thee 
With  sweetness  fills  my  breast "  ? 

Take  the  personality  of  the  Master  out  of 
Christian  history  and  we  have  robbed  it 
of  its  central  moral  power. 

Moreover,  the  personality  of  Jesus  has 
always  been  the  standard  of  reformation 
when  Christianity  has  become  recreant  or 
laggard  or  corrupt.  A  man  named  John 
Wilkes  started  a  political  movement  in 
England  in  the  eighteenth  century,  and 
around  him  sprang  up  a  party  who  called 

IC.  G.  Montefiore:  Some  Elements  of  the  Religious 
Teaching  of  Jesus  According  to  the  Synoptic  Gospels, 
p.  133. 


196     CHRISTIANITY  AND  PROGRESS 

themselves  Wilkites.  These  followers  of 
Wilkes,  however,  went  to  extremes  so  wild 
and  perilous  that  poor  John  Wilkes  him- 
self had  to  explain  to  everybody  that,  as  for 
him,  he  was  not  a  Wilkite.  This  lapse  of 
a  movement  from  the  original  intention  of 
its  founder  is  familiar  in  history  and  no- 
where is  it  more  clearly  illustrated  than  in 
Christianity.  The  Master,  watching  West- 
ern Christendom  today,  with  all  our  hatred, 
bitterness,  war,  would  have  to  say.  If  this 
is  Christianity,  then  I  am  not  a  Christian. 
The  Master,  wandering  through  our  ca- 
thedrals with  their  masses,  waxen  images 
and  votive  gifts,  or  through  our  Protestant 
churches  with  their  fine-spun  speculations 
insisted  on  as  necessary  to  belief  if  one  is 
to  be  a  child  of  grace,  would  have  to  say. 
If  this  is  Christianity,  then  I  am  not  a 
Christian.  Indeed,  just  this  sort  of  service 
the  Master  always  has  been  rendering  his 
movement;  he  is  the  perennial  rebuke  of  all 
that  is  degenerate  and  false  in  Christian- 
ity. Whenever  reform  has  come,  when- 
ever real  Christianity  has  sprung  up  again 
through  the  false  and  superficial,  the  move- 
ment has  been  associated  with  somebody's 
rediscovery  of  Jesus  Christ.  Saint  Francis 
of  xA.ssisi  rediscovered  him,  and  made  a  spot 


THE  PERILS  OF  PROGRESS         197 

of  spiritual  beauty  at  the  heart  of  the  me- 
dieval age.  John  Wesley  rediscovered  him 
and  his  compassion  for  the  outcast,  and  led 
the  Church  into  a  new  day  of  evangelism 
and  philanthropy.  William  Carey  rediscov- 
ered him  and  his  unbounded  care  for  men, 
and  blazed  the  trail  for  a  new  era  of  ex- 
pansive Christianity.  And  if  today  many 
of  us  are  deeply  in  earnest  about  the  appli- 
cation of  Christian  principles  to  the  social 
life  of  men,  it  is  because  we  have  rediscov- 
ered him  and  the  spirit  of  his  Good  Samari- 
tan. In  an  old  myth,  Antaeus,  the  child  of 
Earth,  could  be  overcome  when  he  was 
lifted  from  contact  with  the  ground  but, 
whenever  he  touched  again  the  earth  from 
which  he  sprang,  his  old  power  came  back 
once  more.  Such  is  Christianity's  relation 
with  Jesus  Christ.  If,  therefore,  the  idea  of 
progress  involves  the  modern  man's  con- 
descension to  the  Master  as  the  outgrown 
seer  of  an  ancient  day,  the  idea  of  progress 
'has  given  Christianity  an  incurable  wound. 

Before  we  surrender  to  such  a  popular 
interpretation  of  the  meaning  of  progress, 
we  may  well  discriminate  between  two 
aspects  of  human  life  in  one  of  which  we 
plainly  have  progressed,  but  in  the  other 
of  which  progress  is  not  so  evident.     In  the 


198     CHRISTIANITY  AND  PROGRESS 

Coliseum  in  ancient  Rome  centuries  ago, 
a  group  of  Christians  waited  in  the  arena 
to  be  devoured  by  the  lions,  and  eighty 
thousand  spectators  watched  their  vigil. 
Those  Christians  were  plain  folk — '*  not 
many  mighty,  not  many  noble  " — and  every 
one  of  them  could  have  escaped  that  brutal 
fate  if  he  had  been  willing  to  burn  a  little 
incense  to  the  Emperor.  Turn  now  to  our- 
selves, eighteen  hundred  years  afterwards. 
We  have  had  a  long  time  to  outgrow  the 
character  and  fidelity  of  those  first  Chris- 
tians; do  we  think  that  we  have  done  so? 
As  we  imagine  ourselves  in  their  places, 
are  we  ready  with  any  glibness  to  talk 
about  progress  in  character?  Those  first 
Christians  never  had  ridden  in  a  trolley 
car;  they  never  had  seen  a  subway;  they 
never  had  been  to  a  moving  picture  show; 
they  never  had  talked  over  a  telephone. 
There  are  innumerable  ways  in  which  we 
have  progressed  far  beyond  them.  But 
character,  fidelity,  loyalty  to  conscience  and 
to  God — are  we  sure  of  progress  there? 

To  hear  some  people  talk,  one  would  sup- 
pose that  progress  is  simply  a  matter  of 
chronology.  That  one  man  or  generation 
comes  in  time  after  another  is  taken  as  suf- 
ficient evidence  that  the  latter  has  of  course 


THE  PERILS  OF  PROGRESS         199 

superseded  the  earlier.  Do  we  mean  that 
because  Tennyson  came  after  Shelly  he  is 
therefore  the  greater  poet?  ,What  has 
chronology  to  do  with  spiritual  quality  and 
creativeness,  which  always  must  rise  from 
within,  out  of  the  abysmal  depths  of  per- 
sonality? Professor  Gilbert  Murray,  think- 
ing primarily  in  a  realm  outside  religion 
altogether,  chastises  this  cheap  and  super- 
ficial claim  of  advance  in  spiritual  life: 

"As  to  Progress,  it  is  no  doubt  a  real  fact.  To 
many  of  us  it  is  a  truth  that  lies  somewhere  near 
the  roots  of  our  religion.  But  it  is  never  a  straight 
march  forward;  it  is  never  a  result  that  happens  of 
its  own  accord.  It  is  only  a  name  for  the  mass  of 
accumulated  human  effort,  successful  here,  baffled 
there,  misdirected  and  driven  astray  in  a  third 
region,  but  on  the  whole  and  in  the  main  producing 
some  cumulative  result.  I  believe  this  difficulty 
about  Progress,  this  fear  that  in  studying  the  great 
teachers  of  the  past  we  are  in  some  sense  wantonly 
sitting  at  the  feet  of  savages,  causes  real  trouble  of 
mind  to  many  keen  students.  The  full  answer  to  it 
would  take  us  beyond  the  limits  of  this  paper  and 
beyond  my  own  range  of  knowledge.  But  the  main 
lines  of  the  answer  seem  to  me  clear.  There  are  in 
life  two  elements,  one  transitory  and  progressive, 
the  other  comparatively  if  not  absolutely  non- 
progressive and  eternal,  and  the  soul  of  man  is 
chiefly  concerned  with  the  second.  Try  to  compare 
our  inventions,  our  material  civilization,  our  stores 
of  accumulated  knowledge,  with  those  of  the  age 
of  Aeschylus  or  Aristotle  or  St.  Francis,  and  the 
comparison   is  absurd.     Our  superiority  is  beyond 


200     CHRISTIANITY  AND  PROGRESS 

question  and  beyond  measure.  But  compare  any- 
chosen  poet  of  our  age  with  Aeschylus,  any  phi- 
losopher with  Aristotle,  any  saintly  preacher  with 
St.  Francis,  and  the  result  is  totally  different.  I 
do  not  wish  to  argue  that  we  have  fallen  below  the 
standard  of  those  past  ages;  but  it  is  clear  that  we 
are  not  definitely  above  them.  The  things  of  the 
spirit  depend  on  will,  on  effort,  on  aspiration,  on 
the  quality  of  the  individual  soul,  and  not  on  dis- 
coveries and  material  advances  which  can  be  ac- 
cumulated and  added  up."^ 

Let  any  Christian  preacher  test  out  this 
matter  and  discover  for  himself  its  truth. 
We  are  preachers  of  the  Gospel  in  the 
twentieth  century.  St.  Francis  of  Assisi 
was  a  preacher  of  the  Gospel  in  the  thir- 
teenth century.  We  know  many  things 
which  St.  Francis  and  his  generation  never 
could  have  known  but,  when  we  step  back 
through  that  outward  change  into  the  spirit 
of  St.  Francis  himself,  we  must  take  the 
shoes  from  ofif  our  feet,  for  the  place 
whereon  we  stand  is  holy  ground.  We  may 
not  talk  in  such  an  hour  about  progress  in 
Christian  character  in  terms  of  chronology, 
for  a  modern  minister  might  well  pray  to 
touch  the  garment's  hem  of  such  a  spirit 
as  St.  Francis  had!  When,  then,  one  speaks 
of  outgrowing  Jesus,  one  would  do  well  to 

^Gilbert    Murray:    Tradition   and    Progress,   Chapter 
I,  Religio  Grammatici,  IV,  pp.   19-20. 


THE  PERILS  OF  PROGRESS         201 

get  a  better  reason  than  simply  the  fact 
that  he  was  born  nineteen  centuries  ago. 
The  truth  is  that  humanity  has  been  upon 
this  planet  hundreds  of  thousands  of  years, 
while  our  known  history  reaches  back,  and 
that  very  dimly,  through  only  some  four 
or  five  thousand.  In  that  known  time  there 
has  certainly  been  no  biological  develop- 
ment in  man  that  any  scientist  has  yet  dis- 
cerned. Even  the  brain  of  man  in  the  ice 
age  was  apparently  as  large  as  ours.  More- 
over, within  that  period  of  history  well 
known  to  us,  we  can  see  many  ups  and 
downs  of  spiritual  life,  mountain  peaks  of 
achievement  in  literature  and  art  and  re- 
ligion, with  deep  valleys  intervening,  but 
we  cannot  be  sure  that  the  mountain  peaks 
now  are  higher  than  they  used  to  be.  The 
art  of  the  two  centuries  culminating  about 
1530  represents  a  glorious  flowering  of 
creative  genius,  but  it  was  succeeded  by 
over  three  centuries  of  descent  to  the  abom- 
inations of  ugliness  which  the  late  eight- 
eenth century  produced.  We  have  climbed 
up  a  little  since  then,  but  not  within  distant 
reach  of  those  lovers  and  makers  of  beauty 
from  whose  hearts  and  hands  the  Gothic 
cathedrals  came.  Progress  in  history  has 
lain  in  the  power  of  man  to  remember  and 


202     CHRISTIANITY  AND  PROGRESS 

so  to  accumulate  for  general  use  the  dis- 
coveries,  both  material  and  ethical,  of 
many  individuals ;  it  has  lain  in  man's  in- 
creasing information  about  the  universe,  in 
his  increasing  mastery  over  external  nature, 
and  in  the  grov^ing  integration  of  his  social 
life;  it  has  not  lain  in  the  production  of 
creative  personalities  appearing  in  the 
course  of  history  with  ever  greater  sub- 
limity of  spirit  and  grasp  of  intellect. 
Where  is  there  a  mind  on  earth  today  like 
Plato's?  Where  is  there  a  spirit  today  like 
Paul's? 

The  past  invites  us  still  to  look  back  for 
revelations  in  the  realm  of  creative  person- 
ality. Some  things  have  been  done  in  his- 
tory, like  the  sculptures  of  Phidias,  that 
never  have  been  done  so  well  since  and  that 
perhaps  never  will  be  done  so  well  again. 
As  for  the  Bible,  we  may  well  look  back 
to  that.  There  is  no  book  to  compare  with 
it  in  the  realm  of  religion.  Most  of  the 
books  we  read  are  like  the  rainwater  that 
fell  last  night,  a  superficial  matter,  soon 
running  off.  But  the  Bible  is  a  whole  sea — 
the  accumulated  spiritual  gains  of  ages — 
and  to  know  it  and  to  love  it,  to  go  down 
beside  it  and  dip  into  it,  to  feel  its  vast 
expanse,  the  currents  that  run  through  it, 


THE  PERILS  OF  PROGRESS         203 

and  the  tides  that  lift  it,  is  one  of  the  choic- 
est and  most  rewarding  spiritual  privileges 
that  we  enjoy.  As  for  Jesus,  it  is  difficult 
to  see  what  this  twentieth  century  can  mean 
by  supposing  that  it  has  outgrown  him.  It 
has  outgrown  countless  elements  in  his  gen- 
eration and  many  forms  of  thought  which 
he  shared  with  his  generation,  but  it  never 
will  outgrow  his  spirit,  his  faith  in  God,  his 
principles  of  life :  "  Our  Father  who  art  in 
heaven.  Hallowed  by  thy  name;"  "Thou 
shalt  love  the  Lord  thy  God  with  all  thy 
heart,  and  with  all  thy  soul,  and  with  all 
thy  strength,  and  with  all  thy  mind;  and 
thy  neighbor  as  thyself;"  "  It  is  not  the  will 
of  your  Father  who  is  in  heaven,  that  one 
of  these  little  ones  should  perish;"  "By 
this  shall  all  men  know  that  ye  are  my  dis- 
ciples, if  ye  have  love  one  to  another;"  "  If 
any  man  would  be  first,  he  shall  be  last  of 
all,  and  servant  of  all;"  "All  things  there- 
fore whatsoever  ye  would  that  men  should 
do  unto  you,  even  so  do  ye  also  unto  them;" 
"  Love  your  enemies,  and  pray  for  them 
that  persecute  you;"  "Thy  will  be  done, 
as  in  heaven,  so  on  earth."  Take  principles 
like  these,  set  them  afire  in  a  flaming  life 
the  like  of  which  has  never  come  to  earth, 
and  we  have  in  Jesus  a  revelation  of  the 


204     CHRISTIANITY  AND  PROGRESS 

spiritual  world  which  is  not  going  to  be 
outgrown.  Still  for  the  Christian  he  is 
Saviour  and  Lord,  and  across  the  centuries 
in  his  face  shines  the  light  of  the  knowl- 
edge of  the  glory  of  God. 

IV 
Progress,  therefore,  intelHgently  appre- 
hended, does  not  involve  that  flippant  ir- 
reverence for  the  past  that  so  often  is 
associated  with  it.  It  offers  no  encourage- 
ment to  the  chase  after  vagaries  in  which 
so  many  moderns  indulge,  as  though  all 
that  is  old  were  belated  and  all  that  is  novel 
were  true.  The  idea  of  progress  has  led 
more  than  one  eager  mind  to  think  that  the 
old  religions  were  outgrown;  that  they 
were  the  belated  leftovers  of  a  bygone  age 
and  were  not  for  modern  minds;  that  a 
new  religion  fitted  to  our  new  needs  alone 
would  do.  Suppose,  however,  that  one 
should  say:  The  English  language  is  an 
archaic  affair;  it  has  grown  like  Topsy,  by 
chance;  it  has  carried  along  with  it  the 
forms  of  thinking  of  outgrown  generations ; 
it  is  not  scientific;  what  we  need  is  a  new 
language  built  to  order  to  meet  our  wants. 
In  answer  one  must  acknowledge  that  the 
English  language  is  open  to  very  serious 


THE  PERILS  OF  PROGRESS         205 

criticism,  that  one  can  never  tell  from  the 
way  a  word  is  spelled  how  it  is  going  to  be 
pronounced,  nor  from  the  way  it  is  pro- 
nounced how  it  is  going  to  be  spelled.  One 
must  agree  that  the  English  language 
makes  one  phrase  do  duty  for  many  differ- 
ent meanings.  When  two  people  quarrel, 
they  make  up ;  before  the  actor  goes  ttpon 
the  stage,  he  makes  up;  the  preacher  goes 
into  his  study  to  make  up  his  sermon;  when 
we  do  wrong  we  try  to  make  up  for  it;  and 
the  saucy  lad  in  school  behind  his  teacher's 
back  makes  up  a  face.  The  English  lan- 
guage is  fearfully  and  wonderfully  made. 
But  merely  because  the  English  language 
has  such  ungainly  developments,  we  are  not 
likely  to  surrender  it  and  adopt  instead  a 
modern  language  made  to  order,  like  Es- 
peranto. Say  what  one  will  about  English, 
it  is  the  speech  in  which  our  poets  have 
sung  and  our  prophets  have  prophesied  and 
our  seers  have  dreamed  dreams.  If  any  do 
not  like  it  they  may  get  a  new  one,  but 
most  of  us  will  stay  where  we  still  can 
catch  the  accents  of  the  master  spirits  who 
liave  spoken  in  our  tongue.  There  are 
words  in  the  English  language  that  no 
Esperanto  words  ever  can  take  the  place 
of:  hom,c  and  honour  and  love  and  God, 


206     CHRISTIANITY  AND  PROGRESS 

words  that  have  been  sung  about  and 
prayed  over  and  fought  for  by  our  sires  for 
centuries,  and  that  come  to  us  across  the 
ages  with  accumulated  meanings,  like 
caskets  full  of  jewels.  Surely  we  are  not 
going  to  give  up  the  English  language. 
Progress  does  not  mean  surrendering  it,  but 
developing  it. 

We  shall  not  give  up  Christianity.  It  has 
had  ungainly  developments;  it  does  need 
reformation;  many  elements  in  it  are  piti- 
ably belated;  but,  for  all  that,  the  profound- 
est  need  of  the  world  is  real  Christianity, 
the  kind  of  life  the  Master  came  to  put  into 
the  hearts  of  men.  Progress  does  not  mean 
breaking  away  from  it,  but  going  deeper 
into  it. 

Here,  then,  are  the  three  perils  v/hichl 
tempt  the  believer  in  progress:  a  silly  un- 
derestimate of  the  tremendous  force  of 
human  sin,  which  withstands  all  real  ad- 
vance; superficial  reliance  upon  social  pal- 
liatives to  speed  the  convalescence  of  the 
world,  when  only  radical  cures  will  do; 
flippant  irreverence  toward  the  past,  when, 
as  a  matter  of  fact,  the  light  we  have  for 
the  future  shines  upon  us  from  behind. 
He  who  most  believes  in  progress  needs 
most  to  resist  its  temptations. 


LECTURE  VI 

PROGRESS  AND  GOD 

I 

WE  may  well  begin  our  final  lecture, 
on  the  interplay  between  the  idea  of 
progress  and  the  idea  of  God,  by 
noting  that  only  faith  in  God  can  satisfy 
man's  craving  for  spiritual  stability  amid 
change.  The  central  element  in  the  concep- 
tion of  a  progressive  world  is  that  men's 
thoughts  and  lives  have  changed,  are  chang- 
ing and  will  change,  that  nothing  therefore 
is  settled  in  the  sense  of  being  finally  formu- 
lated, that  creation  has  never  said  its  last 
word  on  any  subject  or  landed  its  last  ham- 
mer blow  on  any  task.  Such  an  outlook  on 
life,  instead  of  being  exhilarating,  is  to  many 
disquieting  in  the  extreme.  In  particular  it 
is  disquieting  in  religion,  one  of  whose  func- 
tions has  always  been  to  provide  stability,  to 
teach  men  amid  the  transient  to  see  the 
eternal.  If  in  a  changing  world  religious 
thought  changes  too,  if  in  that  realm  also 
new  answers  are  given  to  old  questions  and 

207 


208     CHRISTIANITY  AND  PROGRESS 

new  questions  rise  that  never  have  been 
answered  before,  if  forms  of  faith  in  which 
men  once  trusted  are  outgrown,  man's  un- 
settlement  seems  to  be  complete.  The 
w^hole  w^orld  then  is  like  a  huge  kaleidoscope 
turning  round  and  round  and,  as  it  turns, 
the  manifold  elements  in  human  experience, 
even  its  religious  doctrines  and  practices, 
arrange  and  rearrange  themselves  in  end- 
less permutations.  How  then  in  such  a 
world  can  religion  mean  to  us  what  it  has 
meant  to  the  saints  who  of  old,  amid  a 
shaken  world,  have  sung: 

"  Change  and  decay  in  all  around  I  see ; 
O  Thou,  Who  changest  not,  abide  with  me  !'* 

This  fear  of  the  unsettling  effects  of  the 
idea  of  progress  accounts  for  most  of  the 
resentment  against  it  in  the  realm  of  the- 
ology, and  for  the  desperate  endeavours 
which  perennially  are  made  to  congeal  the 
Christian  movement  at  some  one  stage  and 
to  call  that  stage  final.  Stability,  however, 
can  never  be  achieved  by  resort  to  such  re- 
actionary dogmatism.  What  one  obtains 
by  that  method  is  not  stability  but  stagna- 
tion, and  the  two,  though  often  confused, 
are  utterly  different.  Stagnation  is  like  a 
pool,  stationary,  finished,  and  without  pro- 


PROGRESS  AND  GOD  209 

gressive  prospects.  A  river,  however,  has 
another  kind  of  steadfastness  altogether. 
It  is  not  stationary;  it  flows;  it  is  never 
twice  the  same  and  its  enlarging  prospects 
as  it  widens  and  deepens  in  its  course  are 
its  glory.  Nevertheless,  the  Hudson  and 
the  Mississippi  and  the  Amazon  are  among 
the  most  stable  and  abiding  features  which 
nature  knows.  They  will  probably  outlast 
many  mountains.  They  will  certainly  out- 
last any  pool. 

The  spiritual  stability  which  we  may 
have  in  a  progressive  world  is  of  this  lat- 
ter sort,  if  we  believe  in  the  living  God. 
It  is  so  much  more  inspiring  than  the  stag- 
nation of  the  dogmatist  that  one  wonders 
how  any  one,  seeing  both,  could  choose  the 
inferior  article  in  which  to  repose  his  trust. 
Consider,  for  example,  the  development  of 
the  idea  of  God  himself,  the  course  of  which 
through  the  Bible  we  briefly  traced  in  a 
previous  lecture.  From  Sinai  to  Calvary 
— ^was  ever  a  record  of  progressive  revela- 
tion more  plain  or  more  convincing?  The 
development  begins  with  Jehovah  disclosed 
in  a  thunder-storm  on  a  desert  mountain, 
and  it  ends  with  Christ  saying:  "God  is  a 
Spirit:  and  they  that  worship  him  must 
worship  in  spirit  and  truth;"  it  begins  with 


210    CHRISTIANITY  AND  PROGRESS 

a  war-god  leading  his  partisans  to  victory 
and  it  ends  with  men  saying,  "  God  is  love; 
and  he  that  abideth  in  love  abideth  in  God, 
and  God  abideth  in  him;"  it  begins  with  a 
provincial  deity  loving  his  tribe  and  hating 
its  enemies  and  it  ends  with  the  God  of  the 
whole  earth  worshiped  by  "  a  great  multi- 
tude, which  no  man  could  number,  out  of 
every  nation  and  of  all  tribes  and  peoples 
and  tongues ;"  it  begins  with  a  God  who 
commands  the  slaying  of  the  Amalekites, 
"  both  man  and  woman,  infant  and  suck- 
ling," and  it  ends  with  a  Father  whose  will 
it  is  that  not ''  one  of  these  little  ones  should 
perish;"  it  begins  with  God's  people  stand- 
ing afar  off  from  his  lightnings  and  praying 
that  he  might  not  speak  to  them  lest  they 
die  and  it  ends  with  men  going  into  their 
inner  chambers  and,  having  shut  the  door, 
praying  to  their  Father  who  is  in  secret. 
Here  is  no  pool;  here  is  a  river,  the  streams 
whereof  make  glad  the  city  of  God. 

Consider  as  well  the  course  of  the  idea 
of  God  after  the  close  of  the  New  Testa- 
ment canon.  The  Biblical  conception  of 
God  in  terms  of  righteous  and  compassion- 
ate personal  will  went  out  into  a  world  of 
thought  where  Greek  metaphysics  was 
largely  in   control.     There   God  was   con- 


PROGRESS  AND  GOD  211 

ceived  in  terms  of  substance,  as  the  on- 
tological  basis  and  ground  of  all  existence 
— immutable,  inscrutable,  unqualified  pure 
being.  These  two  ideas,  God  as  personal 
will,  and  God  as  metaphysical  substance, 
never  perfectly  coalescing,  flowed  together. 
In  minds  like  St.  Augustine's  one  finds 
them  both.  God  as  pure  being  and  God 
as  gracious  and  righteous  personal  will — 
St.  Augustine  accepted  both  ideas  but  never 
harmonized  them.  Down  through  Chris- 
tian history  one  can  see  these  two  con- 
ceptions complementing  each  other,  each 
balancing  the  other's  eccentricities.  The 
Greek  idea  runs  out  toward  pantheism  in 
Spinoza  and  Hegel.  The  Biblical  idea  runs 
out  toward  deism  in  Duns  Scotus  and 
Calvin.  In  the  eighteenth  century  an  ex- 
treme form  of  deism  held  the  field  and  God, 
as  personal  will,  was  conceived  as  the 
Creator,  who  in  a  dim  and  distant  past  had 
made  all  things.  In  the  nineteenth  century 
the  thought  of  God  swung  back  to  terms 
of  immanence,  and  God,  who  had  been 
crowded  out  of  his  world,  came  flooding  in 
as  the  abiding  life  of  all  of  it. 

As  one  contemplates  a  line  of  develop- 
ment like  this,  he  must  be  aware  that,  while 
change  is  there,  it  is  not  aimless,  discon- 


212     CHRISTIANITY  AND  PROGRESS 

tinuous,  chaotic  change.  The  riverbed  in 
which  this  stream  of  thought  flows  is  stable 
and  secure;  the  whole  development  is  con- 
trolled by  man's  abiding  spiritual  need  of 
God  and  God's  unceasing  search  for  man. 
One  feels  about  it  as  he  might  about  man's 
varying,  developing  methods  of  telling  the 
time  of  day.  Men  began  by  noting  roughly 
the  position  of  the  sun  or  the  length  of 
shadows;  they  went  on  to  make  sun-dials, 
then  water-clocks,  then  sand-glasses;  then 
weight-driven  clocks  were  blunderingly 
tried  and,  later,  watches,  used  first  as  toys, 
so  little  were  they  to  be  relied  upon.  The 
story  of  man's  telling  of  the  time  of  day  is 
a  story  of  progressive  change,  but  it  does 
not  lack  stability.  The  sun  and  stars  and 
the  revolution  of  the  earth  abide.  The 
changes  in  man's  telling  of  the  time  have 
been  simply  the  unfolding  of  an  abiding  re- 
lationship between  man  and  his  world. 

So  the  development  of  man's  religious 
ideas  from  early,  crude  beginnings  until 
now  is  not  a  process  which  one  would  wish 
to  stop  at  any  point  in  order  to  achieve 
infallible  security.  The  movement  is  not 
haphazard  and  discontinuous  change,  like 
disparate  particles  in  a  kaleidoscope  falling 
together  in  new  but  vitally  unrelated  ways. 


PROGRESS  AND  GOD  213 

Upon  the  contrary,  its  course  is  a  continu- 
ous path  which  can  be  traced,  recovered 
in  thought,  conceived  as  a  whole.  We  can 
see  where  our  ideas  came  from,  what  now 
they  are,  and  in  what  direction  they  proba- 
bly will  move.  The  stability  is  in  the 
process  itself,  arising  out  of  the  abiding  re- 
lationships of  man  with  the  eternal. 

Indeed,  the  endeavour  to  achieve  stability 
by  m.ethods  which  alone  can  bring  stagna- 
tion, the  endeavor,  that  is,  to  hit  upon 
dogmatic  finality  in  opinion,  is  of  all  things 
in  religion  probably  the  most  disastrous  in 
its  consequence.  Until  recent  times  when 
reform  movements  invaded  Mohammedan- 
ism and  higher  criticism  tackled  the  prob- 
lem of  the  Koran,  one  could  see  this  achieve- 
ment of  stagnation  in  Islam  in  all  its  in- 
glorious success.  The  Koran  was  regarded 
as  having  been  infallibly  written,  word  for 
word,  in  heaven  before  ever  it  came  to 
earth.  The  Koran  therefore  was  a  book  of 
inerrant  and  changeless  opinion.  But  the 
Koran  enshrines  the  best  theological  and 
ethical  ideas  of  Arabia  at  the  time  when  it 
was  written:  God  was  an  oriental  monarch, 
ruling  in  heaven;  utter  submission  to  the 
fate  which  he  decreed  was  the  one  law  of 
human  relationship  with  him;  and  on  earth 


214    CHRISTIANITY  AND  PROGRESS 

slavery  and  polygamy  and  conversion  of  un- 
believers by  force  v^ere  recognized  as  right. 
The  Koran  was  ahead  of  its  day,  but  having 
been  by  a  theory  of  inspiration  petrified  into 
artificial  finality  it  became  the  enemy  of  all 
opinions  which  would  pass  beyond  its  own. 

When,  now,  one  contrasts  Mohammedan- 
ism with  Christianity,  one  finds  an  im- 
portant difference.  For  all  our  temptation, 
succumbed  to  by  multitudes,  to  make  the 
Bible  a  Koran,  Christianity  has  had  a  pro- 
gressive revelation.  In  the  Bible  one  can 
find  all  the  ideas  and  customs  which  Moham- 
medanism has  approved  and  for  which  it 
now  is  hated:  its  oriental  deity  decreeing 
fates,  its  use  of  force  to  destroy  unbeliev- 
ers, its  patriarchal  polygamy,  and  its  slave 
systems.  All  these  things,  from  which  we 
now  send  missionaries  to  convert  Moham- 
medans, are  in  our  Bible,  but  in  the  Bible 
they  are  not  final.  They  are  ever  being 
superseded.  The  revelation  is  progressive. 
The  idea  of  God  grows  from  oriental  king- 
ship to  compassionate  fatherhood;  the  use 
of  force  gives  way  to  the  appeals  of  love; 
polygamy  is  displaced  by  monogamy;  slav- 
ery never  openly  condemned,  even  when  the 
New  Testament  closes,  is  being  under- 
minded  by  ideas  which,  like   dynamite,  in 


PROGRESS  AND  GOD  215 

the  end  will  blast  to  pieces  its  foundations. 
We  are  continually  running  upon  passages 
like  this:  "  It  was  said  to  them  of  old  time, 

but  I  say  unto  you;"  "  God,  having  of 

old  time  spoken  unto  the  fathers  in  the 
prophets  by  divers  portions  and  in  divers 
manners,  hath  at  the  end  of  these  days 
spoken  unto  us  in  his  Son;"  "The  times 
of  ignorance  therefore  God  overlooked ;  but 
now  he  commandeth  men  that  they  should 
all  everywhere  repent;"  and  over  the  door- 
way out  of  the  New  Testament  into  the 
Christian  centuries  that  followed  is  writ- 
ten this  inscription :  "  The  spirit  of  truth 
.,  .shall  guide  you  into  all  the  truth."  In 
a  word,  finality  in  the  Koran  is  behind — it 
lies  in  the  treasured  concepts  of  600  A.  D. 
— but  finality  in  the  Bible  is  ahead.  We 
are  moving  toward  it.  It  is  too  great  for 
us  yet  to  apprehend.  Our  best  thoughts 
are  thrown  out  in  its  direction  but  they  do 
not  exhaust  its  meaning. 

"  Our  little  systems  have  their  day ; 

They  have  their  day  and  cease  to  be; 

They  are  but  broken  lights  of  thee. 

And  thou,  O  Lord,  art  more  than  they." 

Such  is  the  exultant  outlook  of  a  Chris- 
tian believer  on  a  progressive  world.  If, 
however,  one  is  to  have  this  exultant  out- 


216     CHRISTIANITY  AND  PROGRESS 

look,  he  must  deeply  believe  in  the  living 
God  and  in  the  guidance  of  his  Spirit.  What 
irreligion  means  at  this  point  is  not  fully 
understood  by  most  unbelieving  folk  be- 
cause most  unbelievers  do  not  think  through 
to  a  conclusion  the  implications  of  their  own 
skepticism.  AVe  may  well  be  thankful  even 
in  the  name  of  religion  for  a  few  people 
like  Bertrand  Russell.  He  is  not  only  ir- 
religious but  he  is  intelligently  irreligious, 
and,  what  is  more,  he  possesses  the  courage 
to  say  frankly  and  fully  what  irreligion 
really  means: 

"  That  Man  is  the  product  of  causes  which  have 
no  prevision  of  the  end  they  were  achieving;  that 
his  origin,  his  growth,  his  hopes  and  fears,  his  loves 
and  his  beliefs,  are  but  the  outcome  of  accidental 
collocations  of  atoms;  that  no  fire,  no  heroism,  no 
intensity  of  thought  and  feeling,  can  preserve  an 
individual  life  beyond  the  grave ;  that  all  the  labours 
of  the  ages,  all  the  devotion,  all  the  inspiration,  all 
the  noonday  brightness  of  human  genius,  are  des- 
tined to  extinction  in  the  vast^  death  of  the  solar 
system,  and  that  the  whole  temple  of  Man's  achieve- 
ment must  inevitably  be  buried  beneath  the  debris 
of  a  universe  in  ruins — all  these  things,  if  not  quite 
beyond  dispute,  are  yet  so  nearly  certain,  that  no 
philosophy  which  rejects  them  can  hope  to  stand. 
Only  within  the  scaffolding  of  these  truths,  only 
on  the  firm  foundation  of  unyielding  despair,  can 
the  soul's  habitation  henceforth  be  safely  built."^ 


iBertrand  Russell :  Philosophical  Essays,  II,  The  Free 
Man's  Worship,  pp.  60-61. 


PROGRESS  AND  GOD  217 

Such  is  the  outlook  on  human  life  of  a 
frank  and  thoroughgoing  irreligion,  and 
there  is  nothing  exhilarating  about  it.  All 
prog'ress  possible  in  such  a  setting  is  a 
good  deal  like  a  horse-race  staged  in  a 
theatre,  where  the  horses  do  indeed  run 
furiously,  but  where  we  all  know  well  that 
they  are  not  getting  anywhere.  There  is  a 
moving  floor  beneath  them,  and  it  is  only 
the  shifting  of  the  scenery  that  makes  them 
seem  to  go.  Is  human  history  like  that? 
Is  progress  an  illusion?  Is  it  all  going  to 
end  as  Bertrand  Russell  says?  Those  who 
believe  in  the  living  God  are  certain  of  the 
contrary,  for  stability  amid  change  is  the 
gift  of  a  progressive,  religious  faith. 

II 

It  must  be  evident,  however,  to  any  one 
acquainted  with  popular  ideas  of  God  that 
if  in  a  progressive  world  we  thus  are  to 
maintain  a  vital  confidence  in  the  spiritual 
nature  of  creative  reality  and  so  rejoice  in 
the  guidance  of  the  Spirit  amid  change,  we 
must  win  through  in  our  thinking  to  a  very 
much  greater  conception  of  God  than  that 
to  wdiich  popular  Christianity  has  been  ac- 
customed.    Few  passages  in  Scripture  bet- 


218     CHRISTIANITY  AND  PROGRESS 

ter  deserve  a  preacher's  attention  than 
God's  accusation  against  his  people  in  the 
50th  Psalm :  "  Thou  thoughtest  that  I  was 
altogether  such  a  one  as  thyself."  The 
universal  applicability  of  this  charge  is 
evident  to  any  one  who  knows  the  history 
of  man's  religious  thought.  If  in  the  be- 
ginning God  did  make  man  in  his  own 
image,  man  has  been  busy  ever  since  mak- 
ing God  in  his  image,  and  the  deplorable 
consequences  are  everywhere  to  be  seen. 
From  idolaters,  who  bow  down  before 
wooden  images  of  the  divine  in  human  form, 
to  ourselves,  praying  to  a  magnified  man 
throned  somewhere  in  the  skies,  man  has 
persistently  run  God  into  his  own  mold. 
To  be  sure,  this  tendency  of  man  to  think 
of  God  as  altogether  such  a  one  as  our- 
selves is  nothing  to  be  surprised  at.  Even 
when  we  deal  with  our  human  fellows,  we 
read  ourselves  into  our  understandings  of 
them.  A  contemporary  observer  tells  us 
that  whenever  a  portrait  of  Gladstone  ap- 
peared in  French  papers  he  was  made  to 
look  like  a  Frenchman,  and  that  when  he 
was  represented  in  Japanese  papers  his 
countenance  had  an  unmistakably  Japanese 
cast. 

If   this   habitual   tendency   to   read   our- 


PROGRESS  AND  GOD  219 

selves  into  other  people  is  evident  even 
when  we  deal  with  human  personalities, 
whom  we  can  know  well,  how  can  it  be 
absent  from  man's  thought  of  the  eternal? 
A  man  needs  only  to  go  out  on  a  starry 
night  with  the  revelations  of  modern 
astronomy  in  his  mind  and  to  consider  the 
one  who  made  all  this  and  whose  power 
sustains  it,  to  see  how  utterly  beyond  our 
adequate  comprehension  he  must  be.  As 
men  in  old  tales  used  to  take  diffused  super- 
humans,  the  genii,  and  by  magic  word  bring 
them  down  into  a  stoppered  bottle  where 
they  could  be  held  in  manageable  form,  so 
man  has  taken  the  vastness  of  God  and  run 
it  into  a  human  symbol. 

This  persistent  anthropomorphism  is  re- 
vealed in  our  religious  ceremonies.  Within 
Christianity  itself  are  systems  of  priestcraft 
where  the  individual  believer  has  no  glad, 
free  access  to  his  Father's  presence,  but 
where  his  approach  must  be  mediated  by  a 
priestly  ritual,  his  forgiveness  assured  by 
a  priestly  declaration,  his  salvation  sealed 
by  a  priestly  sacrament.  This  idea  that 
God  must  be  approached  by  stated  cere- 
monies came  directly  from  thinking  of  God 
in  terms  of  a  human  monarch.  No  common 
man  could  walk  carelessly  into  the  pres- 


220     CHRISTIANITY  AND  PROGRESS 

ence  of  an  old-time  king.  There  were 
proprieties  to  be  observed.  There  were 
courtiers  who  knew  the  proper  approach  to 
royalty,  through  whom  the  common  folk 
would  better  send  petitions  up  and  from 
whom  they  would  better  look  for  favour. 
So  God  was  pictured  as  a  human  monarch 
with  his  throne,  his  scepter,  his  ministering 
attendants.  Here  on  earth  the  priests  were 
those  courtiers  who  knew  the  effectual  way 
of  reaching  him,  by  whom  we  would  best 
send  up  our  prayers,  through  whom  we 
would  best  look  for  our  salvation.  Nordau 
is  not  exaggerating  when  he  says :  "  When 
w^e  have  studied  the  sacrificial  rites,  the 
incantations,  prayers,  hymns,  and  cere- 
monies of  religion,  we  have  as  complete  a 
picture  of  the  relations  between  our  an- 
cestors and  their  chiefs  as  if  we  had  seen 
them  with  our  own  eyes."  -^ 

Our  anthropomorphism,  however,  reaches 
its  most  dangerous  form  in  our  inward 
imaginations  of  God's  character.  How  the 
pot  has  called  the  kettle  black!  Man  has 
read  his  vanities  into  God,  until  he  has  sup- 
posed that  singing  anthems  to  God's  praise 
might   flatter   him    as   it   would   flatter  us. 


iMax  Nordau:  The  Interpretation  of  History,  p.  217. 


PROGRESS  AND  GOD  221 

Man  has  read  his  cruelties  into  God,  and 
what  in  moments  of  vindictiveness  and 
wrath  we  would  like  to  do  our  enemies  we 
have  supposed  Eternal  God  would  do  to 
his.  Man  has  read  his  religious  partisan- 
ship into  God;  he  who  holds  Orion  and  the 
Pleiades  in  his  leash,  the  Almighty  and 
Everlasting  God,  before  whom  in  the  be- 
ginning the  morning  stars  sang  together, 
has  been  conceived  as  though  he  were  a 
Baptist  or  a  Methodist,  a  Presbyterian  or  an 
Anglican.  Man  has  read  his  racial  pride 
into  God;  nations  have  thought  themselves 
his  chosen  people  above  all  his  other  chil- 
dren because  they  seemed  so  to  themselves. 
The  centuries  are  sick  with  a  god  made  in 
man's  image,  and  all  the  time  the  real  God 
has  been  saying,  "  Thou  thoughtest  that  I 
was  altogether  such  a  one  as  thyself." 

The  unhappy  prevalence  of  this  mental 
idolatry  is  one  of  the  chief  causes  for  the 
loss  of  religious  faith  among  the  younger 
generation.  They  have  grown  up  in  our 
homes  and  churches  with  their  imaginations 
dwelling  on  a  God  made  in  man's  image, 
and  now  through  education  they  have 
moved  out  into  a  universe  so  much  too  big- 
for  that  little  god  of  theirs  either  to  have 
made  in  the  first  place  or  to  handle  now 


222     CHRISTIANITY  AND  PROGRESS 

that  they  find  it  hard  to  believe  in  him. 
Astronomers  tell  us  that  there  are  a  hun- 
dred million  luminous  stars  in  our  sky,  and 
dark  stars  in  unknown  multitudes;  that 
these  stars  range  from  a  million  to  ten  mil- 
lion miles  in  diameter;  that  some  of  them 
are  so  vast  that  were  they  brought  as  close 
to  us  as  our  sun  is  they  would  fill  the  entire 
horizon;  and  that  these  systems  are  scat- 
tered through  the  stellar  spaces  at  distances 
so  incredible  that,  were  some  hardy  dis- 
coverer to  seek  our  planet  in  the  midst  of 
them,  it  would  be  like  looking  for  a  needle 
lost  somewhere  on  the  western  prairies. 
The  consequence  is  inevitable:  a  vast  pro- 
gressive universe  plus  an  inadequate  God 
means  that  in  many  minds  faith  in  God  goes 
to  pieces. 

Ill 

One  of  the  profoundest  needs  of  the 
Church,  therefore,  in  this  new  and  growing 
world,  is  the  achievement  of  such  worthy 
ways  of  thinking  about  God  and  presenting 
him  as  will  make  the  very  idea  of  him  a 
help  to  faith  and  not  a  stumbling-block  to 
the  faithful.  In  the  attainment  of  that  pur- 
pose we  need  for  one  thing  to  approach  the 


PROGRESS  AND  GOD  223 

thought  of  God  from  an  angle  which  to 
popular  Christianity  is  largely  unfamiliar, 
although  it  is  not  unfamiliar  in  the  historic 
tradition  of  the  Church.  Too  exclusively 
have  v^e  clung  to  the  mental  categories 
and  the  resultant  phraseology  w^hich  have 
grow^n  up  around  the  idea  of  God  as  an 
individual  like  ourselves.  The  reasons  for 
the  prevalence  of  this  individualized  concep- 
tion of  deity  are  obvious.  First,  as  we  have 
seen,  the  growth  of  the  idea  of  God  in 
Hebrew-Christian  thought  moved  out  from 
a  very  clearly  visualized  figure  on  a 
mountain-top  to  those  expanded  and  spirit- 
ualized forms  which  glorified  the  later 
stages  of  the  Biblical  development;  and, 
second,  every  one  of  us  in  his  personal  relig- 
ious experience  and  thought  recapitulates 
the  same  process,  starting  as  a  child  with 
God  conceived  in  very  human  terms  and 
moving  out  to  expanded  and  sublimated 
forms  of  that  childish  conception.  Whether, 
then,  we  consider  the  source  of  our  idea  of 
God  in  the  Biblical  tradition  or  in  our  own 
private  experience,  we  see  that  it  is  rooted 
in  and  springs  up  out  of  a  very  human  con- 
ception of  him,  and  that  our  characteristic 
words  about  him,  attitudes  toward  him,  and 
imaginations   of  him,   are   associated   with 


224     CHRISTIANITY  AND  PROGRESS 

these  childlike  origins.  Popular  Christian- 
ity, therefore,  approaches  God  with  the 
regulative  idea  of  a  human  individual  in  its 
mind,  and,  while  popular  Christianity  would 
insist  that  God  is  much  more  than  that,  it 
still  starts  with  that,  and  the  enterprise  of 
stretching  the  conception  is  only  relatively 
successful.  Even  when  it  is  successful  the 
result  must  be  a  God  who  is  achieved  by 
stretching  out  a  man. 

In  this  situation  the  only  help  for  many 
is,  for  the  time  being,  to  leave  this  endeav- 
our to  approach  God  by  way  of  an  expanded 
and  sublimated  human  individual  and  to  ap- 
proach God,  instead,  by  way  of  the  Creative 
Power  from  which  this  amazing  universe 
and  all  that  is  within  it  have  arisen.  Man's 
deepest  question  concerns  the  nature  of  the 
Creative  Power  from  which  all  things  and 
persons  have  come.  In  creation  are  we 
dealing  with  the  kind  of  power  which  in- 
ordinary life  we  recognize  as  physical,  or 
with  the  kind  which  we  recognize  as  spir- 
itual? With  these  two  sorts  of  power  we 
actually  deal  and,  so  far  as  we  can  see,  the 
ultimate  reality  which  has  expressed  itself 
in  them  must  be  akin  to  the  one  or  to  1;he 
other  or  to  both.  He  who  is  convinceU  that 
the  Creative  Power  from  which  all  things  have 


PROGRESS  AND  GOD  225 

come  is  spiritual  believes  in  God.  I  have  seen 
that  simple  statement  lift  the  burden  of 
doubt  from  minds  utterly  perplexed  and 
usher  befogged  spirits  out  into  the  liberty 
of  the  glory  of  the  children  of  God.  For 
they  did  not  believe  that  the  Creative  Power 
was  dynamic  dirt,  going  it  blind;  they  did 
believe  that  the  Creative  Power  was  akin  to 
what  we  know  as  spirit,  but  so  accustomed 
were  they  to  the  Church's  narrower  anthro- 
pomorphism that  they  did  not  suppose  that 
this  approach  was  a  legitimate  avenue  for 
the  soul's  faith  in  God. 

Nevertheless,  it  is  a  legitimate  avenue 
and  in  the  history  of  the  Church  many  are 
the  souls  that  have  traveled  it.  The  basis 
for  all  mature  conceptions  of  God  lies  here : 
that  the  Power  from  whom  all  life  proceeds 
wells  up  in  two  forms.  One  is  physical;  we 
can  see  it,  touch  it,  weigh  it,  analyze  and 
measure  it.  The  other  is  spiritual;  it  is 
character,  conscience,  intelligence,  purpose, 
love;  we  cannot  see  it,  nor  touch  it,  nor 
weigh  it,  nor  analyze  it.  We  ourselves  did 
not  make  either  of  these  two  expressions  of 
life.  They  came  up  together  out  of  the  Cre- 
ative Reality  from  which  we  came.  When  a 
man  thinks  of  the  Power  from  which  all  life 
proceeds,   he   must   say  at  least  this:   that 


226     CHRISTIANITY  AND  PROGRESS 

when  it  wells  up  in  us  it  wells  up  in  two 
forms  and  one  of  them  is  spirit.  How,  then, 
when  we  think  of  that  Power,  can  we  leave 
spirit  out?  At  the  heart  of  the  eternal  is  the 
fountain  of  that  spiritual  life  which  in  my- 
self I  know. 

This  thought  of  God  does  not  start,  then, 
with  a  magnified  man  in  the  heavens;  this 
thought  of  God  starts  with  the  universe  it- 
self vibrant  with  life,  tingling  with  energy, 
where,  when  scientists  try  to  analyze  mat- 
ter, they  have  to  trace  it  back  from  mole- 
cules to  atoms,  from  atoms  to  electrons, 
and  from  electrons  to  that  vague  spirituelle 
thing  which  they  call  a  "  strain  in  the 
ether,"  a  universe  where  there  is  manifestly 
no  such  thing  as  dead  matter,  but  where 
everything  is  alive.  When  one  thinks  of 
the  Power  that  made  this,  that  sustains  this, 
that  flows  like  blood  through  the  veins  of 
this,  one  cannot  easily  think  that  physical- 
ness  is  enough  to  predicate  concerning  him. 
If  the  physical  adequately  could  have  re- 
vealed that  Power,  there  never  would  have 
been  anything  but  the  physical  to  reveal 
him.  The  fact  that  spiritual  life  is  here  is 
evidence  that  it  takes  spiritual  life  fully  to 
display  the  truth  about  creation's  reality. 
As  an  old  mystic  put  it:  "  God  sleeps  in  the 


PROGRESS  AND  GOD  227 

stone,  he  dreams  in  the  animal,  he  wakes  in 
man !  " 

It  was  this  approach  to  God  which  saved 
the  best  spiritual  life  of  the  nineteenth 
century.  For  in  the  eighteenth  century 
Christianity  came  nearer  to  being  driven  out 
of  business  than  ever  in  her  history  before. 
She  had  believed  in  a  carpenter  god  who 
had  made  the  world  and  occasionally  tink- 
ered with  it  in  events  which  men  called 
miracles.  But  new  knowledge  made  that 
carpenter  god  impossible.  Area  after  area 
where  he  had  been  supposed  to  operate  was 
closed  to  him  by  the  discovery  of  natural  law 
until  at  last  even  comets  were  seen  to  be 
law-abiding  and  he  w^as  escorted  clean  to  the 
edge  of  the  universe  and  bowed  out  alto- 
gether. Nobody  who  has  not  read  the  con- 
temporary literature  of  the  eighteenth  cen- 
tury can  know  what  dryness  of  soul  resulted. 

Man,  however,  cannot  live  without  God. 
Our  fathers  had  to  have  God  back  again. 
But  if  God  were  to  come  back  again  he 
could  not  return  as  an  occasional  tinkerer; 
he  had  to  come  as  the  life  in  all  that  lives, 
the  indwelling  presence  throughout  his  cre- 
ation, whose  ways  of  working  are  the  laws, 
so  that  he  penetrates  and  informs  them  all. 
No   absentee  landlord  could  be  welcomed 


228     CHRISTIANITY  AND  PROGRESS 

back,  but  if  God  came  as  the  resident  soul 
of  all  creation,  men  could  comprehend  that. 
And  he  did  come  back  that  way.  His  return 
is  the  glory  of  the  nineteenth  century.  In 
the  best  visions  of  the  century's  prophets 
that  glory  shines. 

Mrs.  Browning: 

"  Earth's  crammed  with  heaven, 
And  every  common  bush  afire  with  God: 
But  only  he  who  sees,  takes  off  his  shoes." 

Tknnyson  : 

"  Speak   to   Him,   thou,    for   He   hears,   and 
Spirit  with  Spirit  can  meet — 
Closer  is   He  than  breathing,   and   nearer 
than  hands  and  feet." 

CoivERiDGi: : 

"Glory    to    Thee,    Father    of    Earth    and 
Heaven ! 
All   conscious   presence   of  the   Universe ! 
Nature's  vast  ever-acting  Energ}'!" 

Wordsworth  : 

"  a  sense  sublime 
Of  something  far  more  deeply  interfused. 
Whose  dwelling  is  the  light  of  setting  suns, 
And  the  round  ocean  and  the  living  air 
And  the  blue  sky,  and  in  the  mind  of  man ; 
A  motion  and  a  spirit,  that  impels 
All    thinking    things,     all    objects    of    all 

thoughts, 
And  rolls  through  all  things." 

Cari^ylK  : 

"  Then  sawest  thou  that  this  fair  Universe,  were 
it  in  the  meanest  province  thereof,  is  in  very  deed 


PROGRESS  AND  GOD  229 

the  star-domed  City  of  God ;  that  through  every  star, 
through  every  grass-blade,  and  most  through  every 
Living  Soul,  the  glory  of  a  present  God  still  beams. 
But  Nature,  which  is  the  Time-vesture  of  God,  and 
reveals  Him  to  the  wise,  hides  Him  from  the 
foolish." 


Moreover,  this  idea  of  God  as  the  Cre- 
ative Power  conceived  in  spiritual  terms 
need  not  lose  any  of  the  intimate  mean- 
ings which  have  inhered  in  more  personal 
thoughts  of  him  and  which  are  expressed  in 
the  Bible's  names  for  him :  Father,  Mother, 
Bridegroom,  Husband,  Friend.  There  is  in- 
deed this  danger  in  the  approach  which  we 
have  been  describing,  that  we  may  conceive 
God  as  so  dispersed  everywhere  that  we 
cannot  find  him  anywhere  and  that  at  last, 
so  diffused,  he  will  lose  the  practical  value 
on  account  of  which  we  want  him.  For  we 
do  desire  a  God  who  is  like  ourselves — 
enough  like  ourselves  so  that  he  can  under- 
stand us  and  care  for  us  and  enter  into  our 
human  problems.  We  do  want  a  human 
side  to  God.  A  man  who  had  seen  in 
Henry  Drummond  the  most  beautiful  ex- 
hibition of  God's  Spirit  that  he  had  ever 
experienced  said  that  after  Henry  Drum- 
mond died  he  always  prayed  up  to  God 
by    way    of    Drummond.      We    make    our 


230    CHRISTIANITY  AND  PROGRESS 

most  vital  approaches  to  God  in  that  way 
and  we  always  have,  from  the  time  we 
prayed  to  God  through  our  fathers  and 
mothers  until  now,  when  we  find  God  in 
Christ.  We  want  in  God  a  personality 
that  can  answer  ours,  and  we  can  have 
it  without  belittling  in  the  least  his 
greatness. 

I  know  a  man  who  says  that  one  of  the 
turning  points  of  his  spiritual  experience 
came  on  a  day  when  for  the  first  time  it 
dawned  on  him  that  he  never  had  seen  his 
mother.  Now,  his  mother  was  the  major 
molding  influence  in  his  life.  He  could  have 
said  about  her  what  Longfellow  said  in  a 
letter  to  his  mother,  written  when  he  was 
twenty-one.  "  For  me,"  wrote  Longfellow, 
"  a  line  from  my  mother  is  more  efficacious 
than  all  the  homilies  preached  in  Lent;  and 
I  find  more  incitement  to  virtue  in  merely 
looking  at  your  handwriting  than  in  a  whole 
volume  of  ethics  and  moral  discourses."  So 
this  man  would  have  felt  about  the  per- 
vasive influence  of  his  mother.  Then  it 
dawned  on  him  one  day  that  he  never  had 
seen  her.  To  be  sure,  he  had  seen  the  bod- 
ily instrument  by  which  she  had  been  able 
somehow  to  express  herself  through  look 
and  word  and  gesture,  but  his  mother  her- 


PROGRESS  AND  GOD  231 

self,  her  thoughts,  her  consciousness,  her 
love,  her  spirit,  he  never  had  seen  and  he 
never  would  see.  She  v^as  the  realest  force 
in  his  life,  but  she  w^as  invisible.  When  they 
talked  together  they  signalled  to  each  other 
out  of  the  unseen  v^here  they  dv^elt.  They 
both  v^ere  as  invisible  as  God.  Moreover, 
while  his  mother  was  only  a  human,  per- 
sonal spirit,  there  was  a  kind  of  omnipres- 
ence in  her  so  far  as  he  was  concerned,  and 
he  loved  her  and  she  loved  him  everywhere, 
though  he  never  had  seen  her  and  never 
could.  If  spiritual  life  even  in  its  human 
form  can  take  on  such  meanings,  we  need 
not  think  of  God  as  an  expanded  individual 
in  order  to  love  him,  be  loved  by  him,  and 
company  with  him  as  an  unseen  friend.  Let 
a  man  once  begin  with  God  as  the  universal 
spiritual  Presence  and  then  go  on  to  see  the 
divine  quality  of  that  Presence  revealed  in 
Christ,  and  there  is  no  limit  to  the  deepen- 
ing and  heightening  of  his  estimation  of 
God's  character,  except  the  limits  of  his  own 
moral  imagination. 

IV 

With  many  minds  the  difficulty  of  achiev- 
ing an  idea  of  God  adequate  for  our  new 
tmiverse  will  not  be  met  by  any  such  intel- 


232     CHRISTIANITY  AND  PROGRESS 

lectual  shift  of  emphasis  as  we  have  sug- 
gested. Not  anthropomorphic  theology  so 
much  as  ecclesiasticism  is  the  major  burden 
on  their  thinking  about  deity.  Two  concep- 
tions of  the  Church  are  in  conflict  to-day  in 
modern  Protestantism,  and  one  of  the  most 
crucial  problems  of  America's  religious  life 
in  this  next  generation  is  the  decision  as  to 
which  of  these  two  ideas  of  the  Church  shall 
triumph.  We  may  call  one  the  exclusive 
and  the  other  the  inclusive  conception  of 
the  Church.  The  exclusive  conception  of 
the  Church  lies  along  lines  like  these :  that 
we  are  the  true  Church;  that  we  have  the 
true  doctrines  and  the  true  practices  as  no 
other  Church  possesses  them;  that  vv^e  are 
constituted  as  a  Church  just  because  we 
have  these  uniquely  true  opinions  and  prac- 
tices ;  that  all  we  in  the  Church  agree  about 
these  opinions  and  that  when  we  joined  the 
Church  we  gave  allegiance  to  them ;  that 
nobody  has  any  business  to  belong  to  our 
Church  unless  he  agrees  with  us;  that  if 
there  are  people  outside  the  Church  vv^ho 
disagree,  they  ought  to  be  kept  outside  and 
if  there  are  people  in  the  Church  who  come 
to  disagree,  they  ought  to  be  put  outside. 
That  is  the  exclusive  idea  of  the  Church,  and 
there  are  many  who  need  no  further  descrip- 


PROGRESS  AND  GOD  233 

tion  of  it  for  they  were  brought  up  in  it  and 
all  their  youthful  religious  life  was  sur- 
rounded by  its  rigid  sectarianism. 

Over  against  this  conception  is  the  in- 
clusive idea  of  the  Church,  which  runs  along 
lines  like  these:  that  the  Christian  Church 
ought  to  be  the  organizing  center  for  all 
the  Christian  life  of  a  community;  that  a 
Church  is  not  based  upon  theological  uni- 
formity but  upon  devotion  to  the  Lord 
Jesus,  to  the  life  with  God  and  man  for 
which  he  stood,  and  to  the  work  which  he 
gave  us  to  do;  that  wherever  there  are  peo- 
ple who  have  that  spiritual  devotion,  who 
possess  that  love,  who  want  more  of  it,  who 
desire  to  work  and  worship  with  those  of 
kindred  Christian  aspirations,  they  belong 
inside  the  family  of  the  Christian  Church. 
The  inclusive  idea  of  the  Church  looks  out 
upon  our  American  communities  and  sees 
there,  with  all  their  sin,  spiritual  life  unex- 
pressed and  unorganized,  good-will  and  as- 
piration and  moral  power  unharnessed  and 
going  to  waste,  and  it  longs  to  cry  so  that 
the  whole  community  can  hear  it.  Come,  all 
men  of  Christian  good-will,  let  us  work  to- 
gether for  the  Lord  of  all  good  life!  That 
is  the  inclusive  idea  of  the  Church.  It  de- 
sires to  be  the  point  of  incandescence  where, 


234     CHRISTIANITY  AND  PROGRESS 

regardless  of  denominationalism  or  theol- 
ogy, the  Christian  life  of  the  community 
bursts  into  flame. 

As  between  these  two  conceptions  there 
hardly  can  be  any  question  that  the  first 
idea  so  far  has  prevailed.  Our  endlessly 
split  and  shivered  Protestantism  bears  suf- 
ficient witness  to  the  influence  of  the  ex- 
clusive idea  of  the  Church.  The  disastrous 
consequences  of  this  in  many  realms  are 
evident,  and  one  result  lies  directly  in  our 
argument's  path.  An  exclusive  Church  nar- 
rows the  idea  of  God.  Almost  inevitably 
God  comes  to  be  conceived  as  the  head  of 
the  exclusive  Church,  the  origin  of  its 
uniquely  true  doctrine,  the  director  of  its 
uniquely  correct  practices,  so  that  the  activ- 
ities of  God  outside  the  Church  grow  dim, 
and  more  and  more  he  is  conceived  as  ope- 
rating through  his  favourite  organization  as 
nowhere  else  in  all  the  universe.  In  par- 
ticular the  idea  grows  easily  in  the  soil  of 
an  exclusive  Church  that  God  is  not  opera- 
tive except  in  people  who  recognize  him  and 
that  the  world  outside  such  conscious  rec- 
ognition is  largely  empty  of  his  activity  and 
barren  of  his  grace.  God  tends,  in  such 
thinking,  to  become  cooped  up  in  the 
Church,  among  the  people  who  consciously 


PROGRESS  AND  GOD  235 

have  acknowledged  him.  What  wonder  that 
multitudes  of  our  youth,  waking  up  to  the 
facts  about  our  vast  and  growing  universe, 
conclude  that  it  is  too  big  to  be  managed  by 
the  tribal  god  of  a  Protestant  sect! 

The  achievement  of  a  worthy  idea  of 
God  involves,  therefore,  the  ability  to  dis- 
cover God  in  all  life,  outside  the  Church  as 
well  as  wathin,  and  in  people  who  do  not 
believe  in  him  nor  recognize  him  as  well  as 
in  those  who  do.  Let  us  consider  for  a 
moment  the  principle  which  is  here  in- 
volved. Many  forces  and  persons  serve  us 
when  we  do  not  recognize  them  and  do  not 
know  the  truth  about  them.  This  experi- 
ence of  being  ministered  to  by  persons 
whom  we  do  not  know  goes  back  even  to 
the  maternal  care  that  nourished  us  before 
we  were  born.  No  mother  waits  to  be  rec- 
ognized before  she  serves  her  child.  We 
are  tempted  to  think  of  persons  as  minister- 
ing to  us  only  when  the  service  is  con- 
sciously received  and  acknowledged  but,  as 
a  matter  of  fact,  service  continually  comes 
to  us  from  sources  we  are  unaware  of  and  do 
not  think  about. 

"  Unnumbered  comforts  to  my  soul 
Thy  tender  care  bestowed, 
Before  my  infant  heart  conceived 
From  whom  those  comforts  flowed." 


236     CHRISTIANITY  AND  PROGRESS 

This  principle  applies  to  mankind's 
relationship  with  the  physical  universe. 
Through  many  generations  mankind  utterly 
misconceived  it.  They  thought  the  earth 
was  flat,  the  heavens  a  little  way  above; 
yet,  for  all  that,  the  sun  warmed  them  and 
the  rain  refreshed  them  and  the  stars  guided 
their  wandering  boats.  The  physical  uni- 
verse did  not  wait  until  men  knew  all  the 
truth  about  it  before  being  useful  to  men 
and  at  last,  when  the  truth  came  and  the 
glory  of  this  vast  and  mobile  cosmos 
dawned  on  mankind,  men  discovered  the 
facts  about  forces  which,  though  unknown 
and  unacknowledged,  long  had  served  them. 

This  same  principle  applies  also  to  man's 
relationship  with  social  institutions  and 
social  securities  that  have  sustained  us  from 
our  infancy.  If  a  boy  knows  that  there  is 
a  Constitution  of  the  United  States,  he  does 
not  think  about  it.  Then  maturity  comes 
and  he  begins  vividly  to  understand  the 
sacrifices  which  our  forefathers  underwent 
in  building  up  the  institutions  that  have 
nourished  us.  He  recognizes  forces  and 
factors  of  which  he  had  been  unconscious 
but  whose  value,  long  unacknowledged,  he 
now  gratefully  can  estimate. 

This  same  principle  also  applies  to  our 
unconscious    indebtedness    to    people    who 


PROGRESS  AND  GOD  237 

have  helped  us  but  whom  we  have  not 
known.  This  is  a  far  finer  world  because  of 
souls  who  have  been  here  through  whom 
God  has  shined  like  the  sun  through  eastern 
windows,  but  we  can  go  on  year  after  year 
absorbing  unconsciously  the  influence  of 
these  spirits  without  ever  knowing  them.  I 
lived  for  twelve  years  in  a  community  to 
which  in  its  early  days  a  young  minister 
had  come,  and  where  for  forty  years  he 
stood  as  the  central  influence  in  the  town's 
life.  He  brought  it  up  in  the  nurture  and 
admonition  of  the  Lord.  As  was  said  of 
Joseph  in  Potiphar's  prison,  "  Whatsoever 
they  did  there,  he  was  the  doer  of  it."  The 
height  of  his  mind,  the  unselfishness  of  his 
spirit,  the  liberality  of  his  thought,  made  all 
the  people  gladly  acclaim  him  as  the  fore- 
most citizen  of  the  town.  There  is  a  qual- 
ity in  the  town's  life  yet  which  never  would 
have  been  there  had  it  not  been  for  him. 
Sometimes  yet  his  spirit  must  brood  above 
that  community  which  for  forty  years  he 
cherished  and  must  say  to  people  whom  he 
never  knew,  but  who  are  being  blessed  by 
the  benedictory  influence  of  his  life,  what 
Jehovah  said  to  Cyrus  the  Persian,  "  I 
girded  thee,  though  thou  hast  not  known 
me." 

So,  from  multitudinous  sources  services 


238     CHRISTIANITY  AND  PROGRESS 

flow  in  upon  us  that  we  do  not  recognize. 
It  should  be  impossible  then  to  think  that 
God  never  touches  men  until  men  welcome 
him.  Some  people  seem  to  suppose  that 
God  ministers  to  men,  saves  them,  trans- 
forms them,  raises  them  up  and  liberates 
them  only  when  they  confessedly  receive 
him.  That  cannot  be  true  of  the  God  of  the 
New  Testament.  He  is  too  magnanimous 
for  that.  Jesus  says  a  man  is  unworthy  of 
his  discipleship  when  he  serves  only  the 
friends  who  are  responsive,  that  we  must 
serve  the  hostile  and  ungrateful,  too.  Can 
it  be  that  God  is  less  good  than  Jesus  said 
we  ought  to  be?  We  in  the  churches  have 
drawn  our  little  lines  too  tight.  We  have 
been  tempted  to  divide  mankind  into  two 
classes,  the  white  and  the  black:  in  the 
Church  the  white,  the  saved,  who  recognize 
God;  outside,  the  black,  the  unsaved,  the 
ungodly  who  do  not  recognize  him.  By 
that  division  we  sometimes  seem  to  imply 
that  those  outside  the  Church  are  outside 
the  reach  of  God's  transforming  grace  and 
power.  We  are  tempted  to  look  for  God's 
activity  chiefly,  if  not  altogether,  inside  the 
organization  that  avows  him.  But  that  can- 
not be  true.  He  comes  in  like  the  sun 
through  every  chink  and  crevice  where  he 


PROGRESS  AND  GOD  239 

can  find  a  way  of  entrance.  He  does  not 
wait  to  be  welcomed.  He  does  not  insist 
on  being  consciously  recognized  before  he 
enters  a  man's  life.  Rather,  through  any 
door  or  window  left  unwittingly  ajar  where 
he  may  steal  in,  even  though  unobserved,  to 
lift  and  liberate  a  life,  there  the  God  of  the 
New  Testament  will  come — "  the  light 
which  lighteth  every  man  coming  into  the 
world." 

Consider,  for  illustration,  the  many  people 
in  this  generation  who  have  given  up  active 
relationship  with  the  Church  and  assured 
faith  in  God.  They  may  even  call  them- 
selves agnostics.  Would  it  not  be  true  to 
speak  to  them  like  this :  You  have  not  suc- 
ceeded in  getting  rid  of  God.  There  is  a 
flame  in  your  heart  that  will  not  go  out. 
You  try  to  say  there  is  no  God  and  then 
you  go  out  under  the  stars  at  night  and  you 
begin  to  wonder  how  such  a  vast,  law- 
abiding  universe  could  come  by  accident,  as 
if  a  man  were  to  throw  a  font  of  type  on 
the  floor  and  by  chance  it  should  arrange 
itself  into  a  play  of  Shakespeare.  Strange 
universe,  without  God!  You  try  to  say 
there  is  no  God  and  you  pick  up  a  book:  a 
life  of  Phillips  Brooks  or  David  Livingstone 
or  Francis  Xavier,  and  you  begin  to  wonder 


240     CHRISTIANITY  AND  PROGRESS 

that,  amid  these  whirling  stars  and  solar  sys- 
tems, a  race  of  men  should  have  emerged 
with  spiritual  life  like  that  which  we  pos- 
sess, with  ideals  that  beckon  us,  conscience 
that  warns  us  and  remorse  that  punishes  us! 
You  cannot  easily  think  that  this  long  spir- 
itual struggle  and  achievement  of  the  race 
is  an  accident  struck  off  unwittingly  like 
sparks  from  falling  stones  in  a  material 
world  without  abiding  meaning.  Or  you  try 
to  say  there  is  no  God,  and  then  you  are 
married  and  your  first  baby  is  born  and 
there  wells  up  in  your  heart  that  purest 
love  that  man  can  know,  the  feeling  of  a 
parent  for  a  little  child.  And  you  cannot 
help  wondering  how  a  man  can  walk  about 
the  world  with  love  like  that  in  the  center 
of  his  life,  thinking  that  there  is  nothing  to 
correspond  with  it  in  the  reality  from  whichi 
his  heart  and  his  baby  came.  You  try  to  say 
there  is  no  God,  and  then  you  begin  to  grow 
old  and  the  friends  you  love  best  on  earth 
pass  away,  as  Carlyle  said  his  mother  did, 
like  "  the  last  pale  rim  or  sickle  of  the  moon 
which  had  once  been  full,  sinking  in  the 
dark  seas."  You  cannot  help  wondering 
whether  great  souls  can  be  so  at  the  mercy 
of  a  few  particles  of  matter  that  when  these 
are    disturbed    the    spirit    is    plunged    into 


PROGRESS  AND  GOD  241 

oblivion !  You  never  really  have  gotten  rid 
of  God.  There  is  a  flame  in  the  center  of 
your  heart  which  you  cannot  put  out.  If 
there  were  no  God  it  would  be  easier  to  dis- 
believe in  him  than  it  is.  You  cannot  get 
rid  of  him  because  the  best  in  you  is  God  in 
you.  The  flame  is  he  and  there  in  the  cen- 
ter of  your  life,  recognized  or  unrecognized, 
he  is  burning  up  as  best  h^.  can. 

This  principle  of  God's  unrecognized 
presence  applies  to  a  special  group  of  people 
that  has  been  growing  rapidly  in  the  last 
few  years :  the  men  and  women  who  give 
themselves  with  high  spirit  to  human  ser- 
vice in  science  or  philanthropy  but  who 
never  think  of  attributing  their  service  or 
love  of  truth  to  religious  motives.  To  this 
group  belong  many  of  our  scientists.  They 
give  themselves  no  rest,  seeking  for  truth 
which  will  help  human  need.  In  obscure 
and  forgotten  laboratories  to-day  they 
search  for  remedies  for  ancient,  lamentable 
ills.  They  make  it  a  point  of  professional 
honour  not  to  take  profit  for  themselves 
when  they  have  succeeded,  but  to  give 
freely  to  the  world  the  knowledge  they  have 
achieved.  The  pulpit  has  often  quarreled 
with  the  scientists.  Let  the  pulpit  honour 
them  for  their  amazing  outpouring  of  ser- 


242     CHRISTIANITY  AND  PROGRESS 

vice  to  the  world.  To  this  group  also  belong 
many  of  our  philanthropists,  to  whom  sacri- 
fice for  the  common  weal  has  become  the 
moral  equivalent  of  war.  Yet  often  these 
men  and  women,  useful  public  servants  of 
the  generation  as  they  are,  do  not  know 
God.  They  are  great  spirits.  Let  us  not 
pretend  that  they  are  not.  They  are  making 
a  deep  and  beneficent  impress  upon  their 
own  times,  and  our  sons  and  our  sons'  sons 
will  rise  up  to  call  them  blessed;  yet  they 
do  not  know  God.  What  are  we  to  say  of 
such  men  and  women?  You  know  what 
some  people  do  say  about  them.  They  use 
them  as  arguments  against  religion.  They 
say,  See  these  fine  men  living  without  God. 
That  is  an  utter  fallacy.  They  are  not  liv- 
ing without  God.  They  only  think  they  are. 
They  are  the  supreme  examples  of  the  work 
of  the  unrecognized  God.  One  wishes  that 
those  men  and  women  would  recognize 
'God.  God  can  do  much  more  through  re- 
sponsive than  through  unresponsive  lives. 
But  we  may  not  say  that  they  are  living 
without  God.  There,  in  the  center  of  their 
life,  in  the  ideals  they  work  for,  in  the  ser- 
vice they  render,  in  the  love  they  lavish,  in 
the  mission  that  has  mastered  them,  there 
is  God. 


PROGRESS  AND  GOD  243 

Some  time  ago  I  wandered  down  Broad- 
way, in  the  small  hours  of  the  morning,  with 
one  of  the  prominent  citizens  of  the  com- 
munity. At  the  heart  of  his  life  is  the  pas- 
sion to  be  of  use.  Because  his  character  is 
stalwart  and  his  ability  great,  the  scope  of 
his  service  is  far  wider  than  the  capacity  of 
most  of  us.  Amid  the  hurrying  crowds  and 
the  flashing  lights  of  Broadway  we  talked 
together  hour  after  hour  about  God  and  im- 
mortality. He  said  that  he  could  not  believe 
in  God.  He  wistfully  wished  that  he  could. 
He  was  sure  that  it  must  add  something 
beautiful  to  human  life,  but  for  himself  he 
thought  that  there  was  no  possibility  except 
to  live  a  high,  clean,  serviceable  life  until  he 
should  fall  on  sleep.  All  the  way  home  that 
night  I  thought  of  other  people  whom  I 
knov/.  Here  is  a  man  who  believes  in  God. 
He  always  has  believed  in  God.  He  was 
brought  up  to  believe  in  God  and  he  has 
never  felt  with  poignant  sympathy  enough 
the  abysmal,  immedicable  woes  of  human- 
kind to  have  his  faith  disturbed.  He  never 
has  had  any  doubts.  The  war  passed  over 
him  and  left  him  as  it  found  him.  The 
fiercest  storm  that  ever  raged  over  mankind 
did  not  touch  the  surface  of  his  pool  of 
sheltered  faith.     How  could  one  help  com- 


244    CHRISTIANITY  AND  PROGRESS 

paring  him  with  my  friend  who  could  not 
believe?  For  he,  in  high  emotion,  had 
spoken  of  the  miseries  of  men,  of  multitudes 
starving,  of  the  horrors  of  war,  of  the  poor 
whose  lives  are  a  long  animal  struggle  to 
keep  the  body  alive,  of  the  woes  that  fall 
with  such  terrific  incidence  upon  the  vast, 
obscure,  forgotten  masses  of  our  human- 
kind, and  out  of  the  very  ardour  of  his  sym- 
pathy had  cried:  "  How  can  you  believe  that 
a  good  Father  made  a  world  like  this?  " 

Now,  I  believe  in  God  with  all  my  heart. 
But  the  God  whom  I  believe  in  likes  that 
man.  Jesus,  were  he  here  on  earth  as  once 
he  was,  would  love  him.  I  think  Jesus 
would  love  him  more  than  the  other  man 
who  never  had  faced  human  misery  with 
sympathy  enough  to  feel  his  faith  disturbed. 
This  does  not  mean  that  we  ought  content- 
edly to  see  men  ministered  to  by  a  God 
whom  they  do  not  recognize.  It  is  a  pity 
to  be  served  by  the  Eternal  Spirit  of  all 
grace  and  yet  not  know  him.  In  Jean 
Webster's  "  Daddy  Long  Legs,"  Jerusha 
Abbott  in  the  orphanage  is  helped  by  an  un- 
known friend.  Year  after  year  the  favours 
flow  in  from  this  friend  whom  she  does  not 
know.  She  blossoms  out  into  girlhood  and 
young  womanhood  and  still  she  does  not 


PROGRESS  AND  GOD  245 

know  him.  One  day  she  sees  him  and  she 
does  not  recognize  him.  She  has  always 
thought  of  him  as  looking  other  than  he 
does,  and  so  even  when  she  sees  him  she 
does  not  know  him.  Suppose  that  the  story 
stopped  there!  It  would  be  intolerable  to 
have  a  story  end  so.  To  be  served  all  one's 
life  by  a  friend  and  then  not  to  know  him 
when  he  seeks  recognition  is  tragedy.  So 
it  is  tragedy  when  God  is  unrecognized,  but 
behind  that  is  a  deeper  tragedy  still — people 
who  believe  in  God  but  who  have  thoughts 
of  him  so  narrowly  ecclesiastical  that  they 
themselves  do  not  perceive  his  presence, 
acknowledged  or  unacknowledged,  in  all 
the  goodness  and  truth  and  beauty  of  the 
universe. 

Such  an  enlargement  of  the  idea  of  God 
to  meet  the  needs  of  this  new  world  is  one 
of  the  innermost  demands  of  religion  to-day. 
When  a  man  believes  in  the  living  God  as 
the  Creative  Power  in  this  universe,  whose 
character  was  revealed  in  Christ  and  who, 
recognized  or  unrecognized,  reveals  him- 
self in  every  form  of  goodness,  truth  and 
beauty  which  life  anywhere  contains,  he  has 
achieved  a  God  adequate  for  life.  To  such 
a  man  the  modern  progressive  outlook  upon 
the  world  becomes  exhilarating;  all  real  ad- 


246     CHRISTIANITY  AND  PROGRESS 

vance  is  a  revelation  of  the  purpose  of  this 
living  God;  and,  far  from  being  hostile  to 
religion,  our  modern  categories  furnish  the 
noblest  mental  formulas  in  which  the  relig- 
ious spirit  ever  had  opportunity  to  find  ex- 
pression. We  who  believe  this  have  no 
business  to  be  modest  and  apologetic  about 
it,  as  though  upon  the  defensive  we  shyly 
presented  it  to  the  suffrages  of  men.  It  is  a 
gospel  to  proclaim.  It  does  involve  a  new 
theology  but,  with  multitudes  of  eager 
minds  in  our  generation,  the  decision  no 
longer  lies  between  an  old  and  a  new  theol- 
ogy, but  between  new  theology  and  no 
theology.  No  longer  can  they  phrase  the 
deepest  experiences  of  their  souls  with  God 
in  the  outgrown  categories  of  a  static  world. 
In  all  their  other  thinking  they  live  in  a 
world  deeply  permeated  by  ideas  of  prog- 
ress, and  to  keep  their  religion  in  a  separate 
compartment,  uninfluenced  by  the  best 
knowledge  and  hope  of  their  day,  is  an  en- 
terprise which,  whether  it  succeed  or  fail, 
means  the  death  of  vital  faith.  To  take  this 
modern,  progressive  world  into  one's  mind 
and  then  to  achieve  an  idea  of  God  great 
enough  to  encompass  it,  until  with  the  little 
gods  gone  and  the  great  God  come,  life  is 
full  of  the  knowledge  of  him,  as  the  waters 


PROGRESS  AND  GOD  247 

cover  the  sea,  that  is  aHke  the  duty  and  the 
privilege  of  Christian  leadership  to-day. 

In  a  world  which  out  of  lowly  beginnings 
has  climbed  so  far  and  seems  intended  to 
go  on  to  heights  unimagined,  God  is  our 
hope  and  in  his  name  we  will  set  up  our 
banners. 


Printed  in  United  States  of  America, 


Princeton  Theoloqical  Seminary  Libraries 


1    1012  01249  4144 


DATE  DUE 

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